Colchester St James, Essex Genealogy

Guide to Colchester St James, Essex ancestry, family history, and genealogy. Parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
COLCHESTER, is a borough and a market town, it has a separate jurisdiction, and is the head of a union; it is locally in the Colchester division of the hundred of Lexden, and N division of Essex. It contains the parishes of Bere-Church, Greenstead, Lexden, and Mile-End. Colchester is situation on the River Colne.

St. James' is an edifice of the time of Edward II. The other parishes in the town are: All Saints, St. Giles, St. James, St. Leonard, St. Martin, St. Mary-at-the-Walls, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Nicholas, St. Runwald, Holy Trinity, St. Peter, St. Botolph, and St. John. The places of worship within the borough, in 1851, were Church of England, Independents (1863), Baptists, Quakers (1076), Wesleyan Methodists, Primitive Methodists, the New Church, Latter Day Saints, and Roman Catholics.

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

Non-Conformist Churches

 * 1717 England & Wales, Roman Catholics, 1717 at FindMyPast ($), index and images
 * 1613-1971 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index (dates may vary by parish)
 * Independent/Congregational
 * Roman Catholic

Poor Law Unions

 * Colchester Poor Law Union,Essex

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Essex 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
Colchester St James on GENUKI

Essex Ancestors - offers images of genealogical records for the county of Essex ($)