Batley, Yorkshire Genealogy

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

Parish History
BATLEY (All Saints), a parish, in the union of Dewsbury, partly in the Lower division of the wapentake of Agbrigg, and partly in the wapentake of Morley, West Riding, Yorkshire; containing 14,278 inhabitants, of whom 7076 are in the township of Batley, 2 miles (N.) from Dewsbury. There are places of worship for Baptists, Independents, Methodists of the New Connexion, and Wesleyans.

BATLEY, a town, a township, and a sub-district in the district of Dewsbury, and a parish in the districts of Dewsbury and Hunslet, W. R. Yorkshire. The township includes also the hamlets of Brownhill, Brookroyd, Carlinghow, Clark-Green, Havercroft, Chapel-Fold, Healey, Staincliffe, White See, Kelpin-Hill, Capas-Height, Purlwell, and new Roadside, and part of the hamlet of Batley-Carr. There are a handsome Independent chapel of 1856, an elegant Wesleyan chapel of 1861, four other dissenting chapels, a Roman Catholic chapel.

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.

Online Records
Brownhill St Saviour parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

List of Chapelry's in this Parish

 * Batley Carr
 * Brownhill
 * Gildersome
 * Healey

To find the names of the neighbouring parishes, use England Jurisdictions 1851. In this site, search for the name of the parish, click on the location "pin", click Options and click List contiguous parishes.

Batley is an ancient parish (created before 1813). Church of England records for Batley survive from 1559 (All Saints), 1841 (Batley Carr), and 1868 (St.Thomas).

In addition, the following Church of England chapelries were also found within Batley parish:


 * Batley St Thomas the Apostle (1868)
 * Batley Carr (1835)
 * Brownhill St Saviour (1871)
 * Bruntcliffe (abt 1880)
 * Carlinghow (1879)
 * Gildersome St. Peter's (1774)
 * Healey (1859)
 * Morley St Peter (1830)
 * Staincliffe Chapelry (1867)

The original registers are deposited at the West Yorkshire Archives in Wakefield.

The copies made by the minister (ordered by an Act of 1598) and sent each year to the Bishop of the diocese (known as parish register transcripts or Bishop's transcripts) survive from 1600 and are deposited at the West Yorkshire Archives branch in Sheepscar, Leeds.

The Family History Library in Salt Lake City has both parish registers and bishop's transcripts on microfilm for Batley and its chapelries, which are listed in the. Many of these records are indexed in the International Genealogical Index available online through the 'Advanced Search' at familysearch.org.

Genealogy From Periodicals
Handcock, Nora I. Allenheads Lead Miners in America. History with the names of Miners that went to America in 1849, on the ship The Guy Mannering. Picture of the ship included. Many headed for Galena, or Rockford Illinois, Jamestown, San Francisco, Irish Hollow, one family moving on to Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. Names of Miners, Samuel and Maria Vickers, Jacob Nattrass, Joseph &amp; Phoebe Reed, John and Hannah Graham, Thomas and Maria Chatt, the Reed and Lee families from Mount Pleasant, nearly Batley, John &amp; Ann (followed later) Hewitson, Thomas Foster, George Philipson, William Dawson, Thomas Noble, Jacob Peart, Henry Bell, Andrew Muir, John and Ann Lee, John Stevenson. Dates 1832-1870 and is found in the Northumberland &amp; Durham Family History Society Journal, vol.37 no.4, pages 28-30, Family History Library Ref. 942.8 B2jo, vol. 37 no.4

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