Taunton St Mary Magdalene, Somerset Genealogy

Guide to Taunton St Mary Magdalene, Somerset ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
Taunton St Mary Magdalene with also the ancient parish of St James lay within the borough and market-town, and the head of a union, in the hundred of Taunton and Taunton-Dean, W. division of Somerset, 11 miles (S. by W.) from Bridgwater. Wilton, Staplegrove, West Monckton, are adjoining parishes. There are places of worship for Baptists, the Society of Friends, Independents (from 1797), Unitarians, and Wesleyans; and the Roman Catholics have a handsome chapel. The Taunton and Somerset hospital was founded in 1809.

Additional information:

Taunton Township comprises the parish of St. James and the chapel of St. Mary Magdalene; but many houses extend into the adjoining parishes of Wilton and Bishop's-Hull. Another church has been erected within the boundary of St James Taunton, dedicated to the Holy Trinity in 1842.

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.

Church records
Taunton St Mary Magdalene 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.

Information about the parish may be found on Somerset Online Parish Clerks. Records are also available at the Somerset Archives and Local Studies.

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Somerset 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

Websites
http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/SOM/Taunton/index.html