Willshamstead, Bedfordshire Genealogy

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

Parish History
WILSHAMSTEAD, or Wilstead, is a parish, with a village, in the district and county of Bedford; it is on the Midland railway, 4 miles S of Bedford. There is a Wesleyan 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
parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

To find the names of the neighbouring parishes, use England Jurisdictions 1851. In this site, search for the name of the parish, click on the location "pin", click Options and click List contiguous parishes.

Non-Conformist Churches

 * 1717 England & Wales, Roman Catholics, 1717 at FindMyPast ($), index and images
 * Wesleyan

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Bedfordshire Probate Records to find the name of the court having primary jurisdiction. Scroll down in the article to the section Court Jurisdictions by Parish.

Poor Law Unions

 * Bedford

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
Wilshamstead or Wilstead on GENUKI