Chelmsford, Essex Genealogy

Guide to Chelmsford, Essex ancestry, family history, and genealogy. Parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
CHELMSFORD (St. Mary), is a market-town and a parish, and the head of a union, in the hundred of Chelmsford, the S. division of Essex, of which it is the chief town, it is 29 miles (N. E. by E.) from London, on the road to Yarmouth; containing, with the hamlet of Moulsham. Chelmsford is near the Eastern Counties railway, and this railway has a station here. A chapel has been erected at Moulsham. There are places of worship for Independents, Baptists, Irvingites, the Society of Friends, Wesleyans, and Roman Catholics.

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
Chelmsford 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 Essex Record Office (online records available at Essex Archives Online).

For other churches in Chelmsford see the following pages:

Chelmsford All Saints

Non-Conformist Churches

 * Baptist
 * Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
 * Independent/Congregational
 * Society of Friends/Quaker
 * Wesleyan Methodist

Poor Law Unions
Chelmsford Poor Law Union, Essex

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

Websites
Chelmsford on GENUKI

Essex Ancestors - offers images of genealogical records for the county of Essex ($)