Doncaster, Yorkshire Genealogy

Guide to Doncaster, Yorkshire ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
DONCASTER (St. George), a parish, and the head of a union, in the N. division of the wapentake of Strafforth and Tickhill, W. riding of York; containing, with the townships of Langthwaite with Tilts, Balby with Hexthorpe, and Long Sandall with Wheatley, 11,245 inhabitants, of whom 10,455 are in the borough of Doncaster, 33 miles (S. by W.) from York, and 162 (N. N. W.) from London. There are places of worship for the Society of Friends, Independents, Primitive Methodists, Wesleyans, and Unitarians, and a Roman Catholic chapel.

Doncaster St George is an Ancient Parish and became a Minster church in 2004 in the market town in the Metropolitan Borough of Doncaster. St George's Minster Doncaster Wikipedia

A history of the Doncaster Churches is available Doncaster and District Family History Society and describes record holdings for the churches of St George and St Mary Magdalene which was demolished in 1848. The burial registers contain a "p" to denote plague victims in 1582/1583.

The rebuilt church of St George has been designated as a grade I listed building British listed building

From this parish were formed:

Doncaster Christ Church, British listed building dating from 1827-1829

St James (the ‘railway church’), British listed building dating from 1858.

St Jude at Hexthorpe See Balby with Hexthorpe, Yorkshire and Hexthorpe St Jude, Doncaster, Yorkshire and St Mary at Wheatley. The town included congregations of Unitarians, Independents, Methodists, Quakers and other denominations in small numbers.

See also Doncaster Wikipedia

Civil Registration
Primary registration of births, marriages and deaths took place at the Doncaster registration district has been included in the online index available at Yorkshire BMD for post 1837 events; view the coverage table to check progress on the availability of index search. Marriages include


 * Church of England marriages.
 * Civil Marriages at register offices, or non-conformist churches where a registrar was required to be present at the ceremony.
 * Authorised Person marriages. These cover the non-conformist places of worship which applied to keep their own registers as a result of the Marriage Act, 1898 (bringing them into line with Jewish and Quaker marriages which had this status since 1837). In such cases an 'Authorised Person' (usually the minister or priest) recorded the ceremony instead of the registrar. Earlier weddings in these places would be included with civil marriage registers.

A secondary index of 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 however this secondary index may omit the event and may not contain the detail of the Yorkshire BMD index

Church records
Doncaster 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 West Yorkshire Archive Service.

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Yorkshire 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
Doncaster Archives

Holdings in the Doncaster Archives