Bere Ferrers with Bere Alston, Devon Genealogy

Guide to Bere Ferrers with Bere Alston, Devon ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
BEER-FERRIS (St. Andrew), or Bere Ferrers, a parish, in the union of Tavistock, hundred of Roborough, Tavistock and S. divisions of Devon, 7½ miles (S. by W.) from Tavistock; comprising the ancient borough of Beer Alston.

BEER-ALSTON, formerly a borough and market town, in the parish of Beer-Ferris, union of Tavistock, hundred of Roborough, Tavistock and S. divisions of Devon, 14 miles (N.) from Plymouth. The Independents and Wesleyans have places of worship here.

Civil Registration
Births, 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
Bere Ferrers with Bere Alston 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 Devon Archives and Local Studies.

Non-Conformist Churches

 * 1717 England & Wales, Roman Catholics, 1717 at FindMyPast ($), index and images
 * Bible Christian Methodist
 * Independent/Congregational
 * Wesleyan Methodist

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Devon 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
There are many maps and gazetteers showing English places. Valuable web sites are:


 * 1851 Jurisdiction Maps
 * Vision of Britain

1737 Estate Map
Annotated photograph of 1737 estate map of area around Whitsam showing fields and who farmed them. Fig 6.16, p. 151 inMining in a Medieval Landscape: The Royal Silver Mines of the Tamar Valley. By Steven Rippon, Peter Clughton and Chris Smart. Exeter: University of Exeter Press. 2009. The original is identified as a Plan of the Manor of Bere Ferrers surveyed for Lord Hobart, 1737 in the Mount Edgecumbe Papers, Cornwall Record Office - ME2424.

19th Century Map
Map showing and naming all groups of cottages and farmsteads in the parish, created from 6" to 1 mile edition of map. Text suggests that most of the places have been in existance since the medieval period - Fig. 6.13, page 146 of Mining in a Medieval Landscape: The Royal Silver Mines of the Tamar Valley. By Steven Rippon, Peter Clughton and Chris Smart. Exeter: University of Exeter Press. 2009.

Websites
Bere Ferrers wit Bere Alston on GENUKI