Ely Cathedral, Cambridgeshire Genealogy

Guide to Ely Cathedral, Cambridgeshire ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
ELY, a city, and the head of a union, in the Isle of Ely, county of Cambridge, 16 miles NNE from Cambridge, and 67 N by E from London. At the dissolution of the monastery, which was dedicated to St. Peter and St. Ethelreda, Henry VIII altered the ecclesiastical establishment of the See, and by charter converted the conventual into a cathedral church, which was dedicated to the Holy Trinity. The Cathedral, begun in 1081 and not completed till 1534, is a splendid cruciform structure. The city, exclusively of the extra-parochial liberty of the College, comprises the parish of St. Mary, with the chapelry of Chettisham, and the parish of Holy Trinity, with the chapelry of Stuntney. There are places of worship for Baptists, the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion, Independents, and Wesleyans.

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.

Church records
Ely Cathedral 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.

Copies of parish registers are also available through the Society of Genealogists and the Cambridge Archives.

Non-Conformist Churches

 * 1717 England & Wales, Roman Catholics, 1717 at FindMyPast ($), index and images
 * Baptists
 * Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion
 * Independents
 * Wesleyans

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Cambridgeshire 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
Ely on GENUKI