Dudley St Edmund, Worcestershire Genealogy

Guide to Dudley St Edmund, Worcestershire ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
Dudley St Edmund is an Ecclesiastical Parish in the county of Worcestershire, created in 1844 from Dudley St Thomas, Worcestershire Ancient Parish.

Dudley formerly comprised the parishes of St. Thomas and St. Edmund, now united, the church of the former being parochial. The living is a vicarage, valued in the king's books at £7. 18. 6½.; net income, £1000; patron and impropriator, Lord Ward: the tithes were commuted for land and money payments in 1784. The church was rebuilt in 1819, at an expense of £23,000, of which sum, £7600, including £2000 contributed by the Earl of Dudley, were raised by subscription, and the remainder by a rate; it is a handsome structure in the later English style, with an elegant and lofty spire, and from its elevated situation forms a fine feature in the landscape. The church of St. Edmund, at the lower extremity of the town, having been demolished during the parliamentary war, was rebuilt, chiefly at the expense of two brothers of the name of Bradley, assisted by a subscription among the parishioners, about the commencement of the last century; it is now a district church, in the gift of the Vicar, with a net income of £200 a year. Churches at Evehill and Freebodies, in the parish, have been built on sites given by Lord Ward's trustees, by subscription, aided by a grant of £1000 from the Incorporated Society; they are neat edifices, and contain 1500 free sittings; the living of each is in the gift of the Vicar, and has an income of £200. A church has also been erected at Netherton, upon a site presented by the Earl of Dudley, who died in 1833; it is dedicated to St. Andrew: the income is £220, and the Vicar presents to this living also. There are places of worship for Primitive, Kilhamite, and Wesleyan Methodists, for Baptists, the Society of Friends, Independents, Roman Catholics, and Unitarians.

From: A Topographical Dictionary of England (1848), pp. 96-102. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=50929 Date accessed: 24 March 2011.

Dudley is a detached part of Worcestershire which extends into part of Staffordshire. Ecclesiastically within the diocese of Worcester and the Kidderminster deanery it is historically referred to in some records as part of Staffordshire.

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.

See West Midlands BMD and Staffordshire BMD

Church records
Dudley is a detached part of Worcestershire which extends into part of Staffordshire. Ecclesiastically within the diocese of Worcester and the Kidderminster deanery it is historically referred to in some records as part of Staffordshire.

During the Civil War the church was destroyed by fighting and demolished during the period from 1646 the parish was united with Dudley St Thomas, Worcestershire For the period 1647- 1843 it is necessary to refer to the St Thomas registers

St Edmund was rebuilt in 1724 as a chapel of east to St Thomas and did not become a parish again until 1844.

Dudley St Edmund parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

To search for the Dudley records inputted by Staffordshire FreeREG - selectCounty as Staffordshire and for Place select Dudley Staffs. Although most of Dudley is within Worcestershire - many of it's records are for people living in the surrounding Staffordshire Parishes. The Parish itself was always completely surrounded by Staffordshire and has been incorporated with other Staffordshire Parishes for Civil Registration purposes since 1837.

Dudley Archives has deposited Parish registers Bap 1640-1646, 1844-1931 Marr  1540-1646, 1844-1913 Bur 1540-1646, 1844-1996 and all of these registers have been microfilmed. There is also a manuscript transcript of the parish in Dudley Archives from 1540-1646.

Poor Law Unions
Dudley Poor Law Union, Staffordshire

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Worcestershire 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
Worcester Branch of the Birmingham and Midland Society for Genealogy and Heraldry

Dudley Non Conformists

Add any relevant sites that aren’t mentioned above.