Wistaston, Cheshire Genealogy

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

Parish History
WISTASTON (St. Mary), is a parish, in the union and hundred of Nantwich, South division of the county of Chester, 2½ miles (N. E. by E.) from Nantwich.

Wistaston, Saint Mary is an Ancient Parish in Cheshire.

The Church of St Mary the Virgin, Wistaston is in the village of Wistaston, Cheshire, England. It is an active Anglican parish church in the diocese of Chester, the archdeaconry of Macclesfield and the deanery of Nantwich.

The first record of a rector goes back to 1379. The existing records start in 1572. In 1827 the decision was taken that "due to decay it [the church] was unsuitable for public worship". The present church was built in 1827–28 to a design by George Latham.

In the Domesday Survey of 1086, the area was called Wistanestune and was a going concern having a population of 25 to 30 people, valuable woodland and arable land, and deer roaming about. It had been worth 30 shillings, but after William the Conqueror's devastation of Cheshire, it was worth just ten shillings in 1086. It was one of several local villages with the suffix ‘tune’ or ‘ton’ - meaning a ‘farmstead’.

Wistaston is a civil parish and village in the unitary authority of Cheshire East and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, in north-west England. It is approximately 2 miles (3.2 km) west of Crewe town centre and 3 miles (4.8 km) east of Nantwich town centre.

Church records
Wistaston 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 Cheshire Archives and Local Studies.

Non-Conformist Churches
Wistaston, Methodist Chapel. Built in 1945, rebuilt in 1967.

Civil Registration
Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from 1 July 1837 to the present day. The civil registration article tells more about these records. Here are two excellent Internet sites with birth, marriage and death indexes available:


 * FreeBMD
 * Cheshire BMD

Registration Districts

 * Nantwich (1837–1937)
 * Crewe (1937–74)
 * Congleton and Crewe (1974–88)
 * South Cheshire (1988–98)
 * Cheshire Central (post 1998)

The post 2009 reorganisation of civil registration can be found online at Cheshire BMD

Poor Law Unions
Nantwich Poor Law Union

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Cheshire Probate Records to find the name of the court having primary jurisdiction. Scroll down in the article to the section Court Jurisdictions by Parish.

See also England Cheshire Probate Records - FamilySearch Historical Records

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
Wistaston on GENUKI