Maidstone All Saints, Kent Genealogy

Guide to Maidstone All Saints, Kent ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
MAIDSTONE (All Saints), a borough, market town, and parish, having separate jurisdiction, and the head of a union, locally in the hundred of Maidstone, lathe of Aylesford, W. division of Kent, of which it is the county town, 8 miles (S.) from Rochester, and 34½ (S. E. by E.) from London.

Maidstone All Saints is the Ancient Parish church of the county town of Maidstone; see Maidstone Wikipedia. The ancient parish acted as mother church to subsequent parish development and included Loddington within the boundary of the parish; a map of the Maidstone, All Saints with St. Philip and St. Stephen, Tovil parish boundary is available at A church near you.

Loose, Kent was formed as chapelry within the Ancient Parish

The collegiate church was built in 1395 next to the Archbishop's Palace and was one of the largest and widest Parish Churches in England. Memorials include a monument to Sir Jacob Astley, the Royalist Civil War Soldier and a memorial to George Washington's great uncle Lawrence Washington which includes the Stars and Stripes in the family coat of arms.

See Kent Archaeological Society and Edward Hasted 'The town and parish of Maidstone: Churches, religious houses and charities', The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent: Volume 4 (1798), pp. 308-324 at British History Online and Kent Churches website

Civil Registration
See Maidstone Registration District

Kent County Council (KCC) has a certificate centre at the Mansion House in Tunbridge Wells which holds all the completed registers for Kent since 1 July 1837 and can supply a certified copy of any Kent birth, death or marriage entry from any register within its custody or a Kent civil partnership registration from the government online database.

The Mansion House (Certificate Centre) Grove Hill Road Tunbridge Wells Kent TN1 1EP

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
Maidstone All Saints 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.

Kent Online Parish Clerks has indexes available for select parishes. Records are also available at the Kent Archives.

Census records
Census returns for Maidstone 1841-1891

FamilySearch Records includes collections of census indexes which can be searched online for free. In addition

Images of the census for 1841-1891 can be viewed in census collections at Ancestry (fee payable) or Find My Past (fee payable)

The 1851 census of England and Wales attempted to identify religious places of worship in addition to the household survey census returns.

Ancestry UK Census Collection

Find my Past census search 1841-1901

Poor Law Unions
Maidstone Poor Law Union, Kent

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

See England, Kent, Wills and Probate (FamilySearch Historical Records)

Local Family History Centre
Maidstone Family History Centre, Kent


 * FHC Portal This centre has access to the Family History Centre Portal page which gives free access in the centre to premium family history software and websites that generally charge for subscriptions.
 * Publication of the restricted access images England, Kent, Wills and Probate (FamilySearch Historical Records) and England, Kent, Land Tax Assessments (FamilySearch Historical Records) means that it is advisable to telephone the centre to reserve a computer if you wish to view these collections using the portal.

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

 * Kent Online Parish Clerks (OPC)