Rame, Cornwall Genealogy

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

Parish History
RAME (St. German), a parish, in the union of St. Germans, S division of the hundred of East, E division of Cornwall, 4½ miles SSW from Devonport.

Rame (Cornish: Hordh) St Germanus is an Ancient Parish in the county of Cornwall. Other places in the parish included: Cawsand. Originally Cawsand was in the parish of Rame, but now has its own church in the village. The neighbouring church at Maker is in the same parish as Rame. Together they are called 'Maker-with-Rame' parish.

The church in the hamlet is dedicated to St. Germanus, the fighting bishop who is supposed to have landed in the neighbourhood when he came to Britain to suppress the Pelagian heresy in 400 A.D. It is all built of rough slate: the present stone building was consecrated in 1259. The slender, un-buttressed tower with its broached spire (an unusual feature in a Cornish church), the north wall and the chancel are all probably of this date, when the church was cruciform in shape. A south aisle was added in the 15th century and the Norman tympanum is a relic of the earlier church building on the site. The church is not supplied by electricity and is lit by candles.

Maker with Rame, United Parish in the Diocese of Truro is the modern parish name.

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
parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

Typed transcript of baptisms 1653-1788 is available online at historic records (formerly Record Search)

Cornwall Online Parish Clerks
An extremely useful resource is the Cornwall Online Parish Clerks page for the parish. The Online Parish Clerk for Rame also contributes to a website which includes the following parishes on the Rame Peninsula:


 * Sheviock, Cornwall
 * St Germans, Cornwall
 * Maker, 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
Rame in GENUKI