Melksham, Wiltshire Genealogy

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

Parish History
MELKSHAM (St. Michael), a market-town and parish, and the head of a union, in the hundred of Melksham, and N. divisions of Wiltshire, 28 miles (N. W.) from Salisbury, and 95 (W. by S.) from London. There are chapels of ease at Earl-Stoke and Seend, and the tythings of Beanacre, Blackmore, Caunonhold, and Woodrow are included. There are two chantry chapels, and a district church was consecrated at Shaw Whitley in 1837. Also there are places of worship in the parish for Baptists, the Society of Friends, Independents, and Wesleyans. The union of Melksham comprises six 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.

Church records
Melksham 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.

Information about the parish may be found on Wiltshire Online Parish Clerks. Records are also available at the Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre.

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