Leominster, Herefordshire Genealogy

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

Parish History
LEOMINSTER (St. Peter and St. Paul), a parish, and the head of a union, in the hundred of Wolphy, county of Hereford; comprising the borough of Leominster, which has separate jurisdiction, and the townships of Brierley, Broadward, Cholstrey, Eaton, Hide with Wintercott, Ivington, Newtown, Stagbatch, Stretford with Hennor, and Wharton.

Leominster is a market town and borough in northern Herefordshire whose history is described at Leominster Wikipedia

The extensive Ancient parish attached to the Priory church has over centuries developed chaplries which became parishes. The districts around the town have reduced but included Eaton, Broadward and Brierly, Hide Ash, Hennor or Henner, Leominster Borough, Hide or Hyde, Wintercott, Wharton, Stretford and Stagbatch or Stagbalch, Newtown, Stagbatch, and Cholstrev, Leominster In and Leominster Out or within or without. Depending on record source and spelling all these descriptions for areas and districts of the town may be found.

The Priory church of St Peter and St Paul has been designated as a grade I listed building British listed building

The Priory church of St Peter and St Paul Leominster is part of the Leominster Team Ministry group of parishes Leominster Community Portal

See also Herefordshire Churches

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
Leominster 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.

The Herefordshire Archive and Records Centre houses many parish registers. See The records we hold for a list of records available there. How to contact them:
 * Herefordshire Archive and Records Centre Fir Tree Lane Rotherwas Hereford HR2 6LA Telephone: +44 (0)1432 260750 Email: [mailto:archives@herefordshire.gov.uk archives@herefordshire.gov.uk] Website: Herefordshire Archive and Records Centre

Link to the FamilySearch Catalogue showing the film numbers in their collection

Census Records
FamilySearch Records includes collections of census indexes which can be searched online for free. In addition FamilySearch Centres offer free access to images of the England and Wales Census through the FHC Portal page which gives free access to premium family history software and websites that generally charge for subscriptions.

Category:England Family History Centres to locate local Family History Centres in UK

Introduction to Family History Centers to locate outside UK.

Many archives and local history collections in public libraries in England and Wales offer online census searches and also hold microfilm or fiche census returns.

Images of the census for 1841-1891 can be viewed in census collections at Ancestry (fee payable) or Find My Past (fee payable)

The 1851 census of England and Wales attempted to identify religious places of worship in addition to the household survey census returns.

Ancestry UK Census Collection

Find my Past census search 1841-1901

Prior to the 1911 census the household schedule was destroyed and only the enumerator's schedule survives.

The 1911 census of England and Wales was taken on the night of Sunday 2 April 1911 and in addition to households and institutions such as prisons and workhouses, canal boats merchant ships and naval vessels it attempted to include homeless persons. The schedule was completed by an individual and for the first time both this record and the enumerator's schedule were preserved. Two forms of boycott of the census by women are possible due to frustration at government failure to grant women the universal right to vote in parliamentary and local elections. The schedule either records a protest by failure to complete the form in respect of the women in the household or women are absent due to organisation of groups of women staying away from home for the whole night. Research estimates that several thousand women are not found by census search.Find my Past 1911 census

Poor Law Unions
Leominster Poor Law Union, Herefordshire

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Herefordshire 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/HEF/Leominster/index.html