St John, Cornwall Genealogy

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

Parish History
JOHN, ST., a parish, in the union of St. Germans, S. division of the hundred of East, E. division of Cornwall, 6 miles SE by E from St. Germans.

The parish church is dedicated to St John (originally it was dedicated to St John the Evangelist but from 1912 the dedication was changed to St John the Baptist).

The parish is opposite Plymouth, Devon, separated from it by St John's Lake, an inlet of The Hamoaze in Plymouth Sound.

St John parish is in the St Germans Registration District. To the north the parish is bordered by St John's Lake and to the south by the sea. To the east the parish is bordered by Millbrook, Cornwall, to the south-east by Maker, Cornwall and to the west by Antony, Cornwall parish.

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 Free BMD.

Church records
St John 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 Cornwall Record Office.

Cornwall Online Parish Clerks
An extremely useful resource is the Cornwall Online Parish Clerks page for the parish. In addition the Online Parish Clerk has contributed to the website for the Rame Peninsula with other parishes Rame, Cornwall Maker, Cornwall St Germans, CornwallSheviock, Cornwall

Census records
Cornwall Online Census Project

Poor Law Unions
St Germans Poor Law Union

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


 * England Jurisdictions 1851
 * Vision of Britain

Websites
St John in GENUKI