Cooling, Kent Genealogy

Guide to Cooling, Kent ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish register transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
COOLING (St. James), a parish, in the union of Hoo, hundred of Shamwell, lathe of Aylesford, W division of Kent, 6 miles N by E from Rochester.

Cooling St James is a redundant Anglican church on the Hoo peninsula in the Medway district of Kent and was an Ancient Parish.

The church is now in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust and open to visitors; the churchyard contains a group of children's graves which are widely believed to have inspired Charles Dickens description of the church yard in the opening of Great Expectations.

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

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.

Registration Districts

 * 1837-1923 Hoo Registration District
 * 1923-1941 Srood and Hoo Registration District
 * 1941-1998 Chatham Registration District

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 - Kent ($)
 * Online Genealogical Index - Links to online genealogical records
 * The Genealogist Parish Registers - Kent ($)
 * UK Websites for Parish Records - Links to online genealogical records

Non-Conformists (All other Religions)

 * 1717 England & Wales, Roman Catholics, 1717 at Findmypast ($), index and images (coverage may vary)

Census Records

 * Census Returns for Cooling 1841-1891
 * Ancestry UK Census Collection ($)
 * Findmypast Census ($)

Poor Law Unions

 * Hoo Poor Law Union, Kent

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

 * Church of St James British Listed Buildings
 * Cooling Parish Kent Online Parish Clerks
 * St James' Church, Cooling, Kent Churches Conservation Trust
 * St James, Cooling, Church of England GENUKI