Axminster, Dorset Genealogy

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

Parish History
Axminster, parish and market town, in the above hundred. Axminister is an ancient parish partly in Devon and partly in Dorset, and is on the river Axe, 25 miles NE. of Exeter and 144 miles SW. of London by rail.

Church Records
Abstracts of bishop's transcripts (1606-1636) are online at Internet Archive - free.

Abstracts of bishop's transcripts (1634-1635) are online at Internet Archive - free.

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

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