Wigan All Saints, Lancashire Genealogy

England Lancashire  Lancashire Parishes

See a List of Wigan Chapelries.

Parish History
WIGAN All Saints,a parish, borough, and markettown, which has separate jurisdiction, and the head of a union, chiefly in the hundred of West Derby, S. division of the county of Lancaster; containing, with the chapelries of Abram, Billinge, Haigh, Hindley, Pemberton, and Up Holland, and the townships of Aspull, Billinge Higher End, Dalton, Ince-in-Makerfield, Orrell, 18 miles west by northwest of Manchester.

Wigan St George's church, in the town, was erected as a chapel of ease, in 1781. St. Catherine's church, at Scholes, of which the first stone was laid on the 6th April 1840. Both these churches have districts assigned to them. Wigan St Thomas's church, in the Queen-street, was erected in 1848. At Abram, Billinge, Haigh, Hindley, Holland, and Pemberton are also other chapels of the Church of the Church of England.

In the town are places of worship for Baptists and Independents, a handsome meeting-house for Wesleyans, and a Scottish church. The Roman Catholics have two chapels; St Mary's, and St John's, built in 1819. In Scholes is St Patrick's Roman Catholic chapel.

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.

Online Records
Wigan All Saints parish registers and those registers of all of its smaller chapelries lying within its boundaries have been mostly transcribed and are displayed online at the following web sites and ranges of years:

Original Records
The Lancashire Record Office at Bow Lane, Preston PR2 1RE, holds the original parish registers in its vast collections. Contact their website for contact information.

The Family History Library has microfilmed the parish registers and Bishop's transcripts of Wigan parish for the years 1578-1900. These films are available for ordering/circulating and researching at any one of its satellite FamilySearch Centers worldwide.

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Lancashire 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