Penzance, Cornwall Genealogy

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

Parish History
PENZANCE, a sea-port, incorporated market-town, and chapelry, and the head of a union, in the parish of Madron, having exclusive jurisdiction, locally in the W. division of the hundred of Penwith and of the county of Cornwall, 67 miles (S. W. by W.) from Launceston, and 282 (W. S. W.) from London. Here are places of worship for Baptists, the Society of Friends, Independents, Primitive Methodists, and Wesleyans; also a synagogue.

Civil Registration
Births, 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
 parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

Images of parish registers are available online at FamilySearch Images refer to Cornwall Record Office reference: P 133

Cornwall Online Parish Clerks
An extremely useful resource is the Cornwall Online Parish Clerks page for the parish.

Poor Law Unions
Penzance Poor Law Union

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Cornwall 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
There are many maps and gazetteers showing English places. Valuable websites are:


 * 1851 Jurisdiction Maps
 * Vision of Britain

Websites
Penzance in Genuki