Great Driffield, Yorkshire Genealogy

Guide to Great Driffield, Yorkshire ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
DRIFFIELD, GREAT (All Saints), a market-town and parish, and the head of a union, in the Bainton-Beacon division of the wapentake of Harthill, E. riding of York, 29 miles (E. by N.) from York, and 193 (N.) from London. It contains the chapelry of Little Driffield and the township of Emswell with Kelley-thorpe. Church of England records began in 1556. There are places of worship for Baptists, Independents, and Wesleyan and Primitive Methodists.

Civil Registration
Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from July 1837 to the present day. The civil registration article tells more about these records. There are several Internet sites with name lists or indexes. A popular site is FreeBMD.

Church Records
Great Driffield parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

To find the names of the neighboring parishes, use England Jurisdictions 1851 Map. In this site, search for the name of the parish, click on the location "pin", click Options and click List contiguous parishes.

Records are also available at the The Treasure House (location of the East Riding Archives and Local Studies Service).

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Yorkshire Probate Records to find the name of the court having primary jurisdiction. Scroll down in the article to the section Court Jurisdictions by Parish.

Maps and Gazetteers
Maps are a visual look at the locations in England. Gazetteers contain brief summaries about a place.


 * England Jurisdictions 1851
 * Vision of Britain