Portland, Dorset Genealogy

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

Parish History
Portland, Isle of, peninsula, in S. of Dorset, 4 mile S. of Weymouth and 50 miles SW. of Southampton by rail. Portland is 4½ miles long by 1½ mile broad, is connected with the mainland by a long narrow ridge of shingle called the Chesil Bank.

PORTLAND (St. George), a parish, constituting the liberty of the Isle of Portland, in the union of Weymouth, Dorchester division of Dorset, 3 miles (S. S. W.) from Weymouth. There are places of worship for Independents and Wesleyans.

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
Portland parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

Portland St Andrew parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

Portland St George parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

Portland Tabernacle parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

Portland St John the Baptist parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

Portland St Peter 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.

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