Cornwall, England Genealogy

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

County Information
Cornwall (Cornish: Kernow) is a county of England and is located at the tip of the south-western peninsula of Great Britain. It is also one of the Celtic nations.

The area was first inhabited by Neolithic and then Bronze Age peoples, and later, in the Iron Age, by Celtic peoples. Cornwall is a part of the Brythonic area of Britain and became detached from Wales after the Battle of Deorham, becoming a separate Celtic nation. It often came into conflict with the expanding Saxon kingdom of Wessex, to its east, before King Athelstan of Wessex (924-939) set the boundary between England and Cornwall at the River Tamar.

It is unclear when Cornwall was absorbed into England, although the Cornish language continued to be spoken until the 18th century. Cornwall today has a population of 526,300, covering an area of 1,376 square miles (3,563 km²). The administrative centre is the city of Truro.

In the 2001 UK census, people were requested to give their ethnic grouping and were able to choose Cornish. However, the UK government announced that this option would not be available in the 2011 census.

Parishes

 * Use an interactive mapto find jurisdictions for each parish in Cornwall.
 * The pages for each parish found on the UK and Ireland Genealogy website are outstanding, very detailed, and current. They are an absolute must for anyone doing Cornish research.

Civil Registration Districts
List of Cornwall Civil Registration Districts.

Websites

 * Cornwall Online Parish Clerks
 * Searchable Database
 * Cornwall Resources and help pages on RootsChat Cornwall Resources and help pages. (Free).
 * Cornish Family History at Cornwall Record Office website
 * Cornwall GenWeb Surname Registry List of Surnames and location in Cornwall where found.
 * Cornish Genealogy Index with records
 * Cornwall Genealogy records
 * GenUKI Cornwall
 * Looking 4 Kin Genealogy &amp; Family History Network - Cornwall
 * Cornish Mining Home Life