Bosley, Cheshire Genealogy

Guide to Bosley, Cheshire ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
BOSLEY, is a chapelry, in the parish of Prestbury, union and hundred of Macclesfield, N. division of the county of Chester, it is 4¾ miles ENE from Congleton. The chapelry is situated on the road from Manchester to Derby.

Bosley St Mary the Virgin was originally a chapelry in the Ancient Parish of Prestbury.

The church was originally dedicated to St. Thomas a Becket of Canterbury but later this was changed to St. Lawrence and then to St. Mary the Virgin. It was formerly a chapel of ease for Prestbury, and was granted the right to have a font and burial ground by Pope Boniface in a Papal Bull of 5 April 1402 as recorded at Lichfield. The parish registers go back to 1728 and the list of vicars to approximately 1596.

Following the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, there were a series of Acts of Parliament designed to punish the Nonconformists and to protect the Church of England.

Find Neighboring Parishes
Use England Jurisdictions 1851 Map
 * Type the name of the parish in the search bar
 * Click on the location pin on the map
 * Choose Options from the pop up box
 * Click "List Contiguous Parishes" to find the neighboring parishes

Church Records
The Church of England (Anglican) became the official state religion in 1534, with the reigning monarch as its Supreme Governor. Non-Conformist refers to all other religious denominations that are not the official state religion.

Church of England
Due to the increasing access of online records: Hover over the collection's title for more information Other Websites These databases have incomplete parish coverage.
 * Individual parish coverage for databases in this table are inconsistent and should be verified
 * Dates in the following table are approximate
 * Joiner Marriage Index - Cheshire ($)
 * The Genealogist Parish Registers - Cheshire ($)
 * UK Websites for Parish Records - Links to online genealogical records
 * Online Genealogical Index - Links to online genealogical records

Non-Conformists (All other Religions)

 * 1717 England & Wales, Roman Catholics, 1717 at FindMyPast ($), index and images (coverage may vary)
 * 1671-1900 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index (dates may vary by parish)
 * Bosley, Methodist Chapel (Wesleyan). Founded 1832. Memorial inscriptions have been published by the FHS of Cheshire (1995).

Civil Registration
Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from 1 July 1837 to the present day. The civil registration article tells more about these records. Here are two excellent Internet sites with birth, marriage and death indexes available:


 * FreeBMD
 * Cheshire BMD

Registration Districts

 * Macclesfield (1837–98)
 * Cheshire East (post 1998)

Poor Law Unions

 * Macclesfield
 * Macclesfield Poor Law Union, Cheshire

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

see also England Cheshire Probate Records - FamilySearch Historical Records

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

Websites
Bosley on GENUKI