St Mary (Scillys), Cornwall Genealogy

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

Parish History
MARY (ST.), an island and a parish in the Scilly Islands, Cornwall. The island is the chief one of the Scilly islands; measures about 2½ miles in length, about 1½ mile in breadth, and about 1,600 acres in area; and contains the village of Hugh Town and has a post office.

Scilly Islands, island-group at the entrance of the English Channel, 25 miles SW. of Lands End, 3500 ac., pop. 2320;called Scilly. The islands constitute a parish of Cornwall, and are in the Western or St Ives Parliamentary Division of that county. They are about 30 miles in circumference and number 140, but only six of them are of any importance: St Mary's, Tresco, St Martins, St Agnes, Bryher, and Samson.

See Isles of Scilly for more information.

St Mary Scilly is an Ancient parish. The church of St Mary was built at Old Town during the 19th century, replacing a previous building dating substantially from the 12th century.

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 FreeBMD.

Church records
St Marys (Scillys) 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.

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:


 * 1851 Jurisdiction Maps
 * Vision of Britain