Lancashire, England Genealogy

Guide to Lancashire ancestry, family history and genealogy: birth records, marriage records, death records, census records, parish registers, and military records.

County Information
Lancashire, is a maritime county located in the North West of England. It is sometimes called the County of Lancaster.

By 1850 Lancashire was comprised of 75 ancient parishes, each with mostly large boundaries. However, with over 400 smaller chapels in Lancashire (called chapelries, chapels of ease, district chapels or ecclesiastical churches), most parishes on average had 8 chapels which sub-divided them.

You can also check John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales or, Samuel A. Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England to determine whether your 'parish' was in fact a "parish" or, if it was instead a chapel of ease (chapelry) within a large parish boundary, etc.

Parishes and Chapelries
The following interactive map enables researchers to make sense of this county's jurisdictional makeup: 1851 Jurisdictions Map.

Civil Registration Districts
List of Lancashire Civil Registration Districts and the parishes they contain.

Websites

 * Lancashire Online Parish Clerks Links to extracted data from many of the parishes in Lancashire.
 * GENUKI UK &amp; Ireland Genealogy
 * RootsChat Lancashire Resources and help pages Free Family History Help in Lancashire