Pontefract, Yorkshire Genealogy

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

Parish History
PONTEFRACT (St.Giles), a borough, market town, and parish, in the Upper division of the wapentake of Osgoldcross, W. riding of York; comprising the townships of Carleton, East Hardwick, Monkhill, Pontefract, and Tanshelf, and the chapelry of Knottingley; and containing 9851 inhabitants, of whom 4669 are in the borough, 23 miles (S.S. W.) from York, and 177½ (N. N. W.) from London. There are places of worship for the Society of Friends, Independents, Primitive Methodists, and Wesleyans, and a Roman Catholic chapel.

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
Pontefract 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 West Yorkshire Archive Service.

Genealogy
Neyt, E. James Kersley, M.S.M. The Temperant Colour Sergeant. Picture of the Kersley family, Pontefract. 1898 with names, and a history of the family. The hampshire Family Historian, vol. XII,no.2, August 1985, pages 97-99. Family History Library Ref. 942.27 B2h v.12

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