Brightlingsea, Essex Genealogy

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

Parish History
Brightlingsea (All Saints), is a village and a parish in Lexden district, Essex. The village stands on the estuary of the Colne, opposite Mersea island, at a terminus of the Tendring Hundred railway, it is 8 miles SE by S of Colchester. There are chapels for Independents, Wesleyans, and Swedenborgians.

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
Brightlingsea 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).

Online images are available Seax - Essex Archives Online From the Essex Record Office for both All Saints Church of England and Non conformist churches Brightlingsea Congregational Church and New Jerusalem Church deposited records.

Non-Conformist Churches

 * Independent/Congregational
 * Swedenborgian/New Jerusalem/New Church
 * Wesleyan Methodist

Poor Law Unions
Tendring Poor Law Union, Essex Lexden and Winstree 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
Brightlingsea on GENUKI

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