Lawhitton, Cornwall Genealogy

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

Parish History
LAWHITTON (St. Michael), a parish, in the union and parliamentary borough of Launceston, N. division of the hundred of East, E. division of Cornwall, 2¼ miles SE by E from Launceston.

Lawhitton (Cornish: Nansgwydhenn) St Michael is an Ancient Parish in the county of Cornwall.

The parish church of St Michael is in Lawhitton village at OS Grid Ref SX355825; it is of various periods of English Gothic architecture. The plan is unusual and the tower stands in the position of a south transept. The tower is 13th century in date and there is a north aisle. The font is Norman, of the Altarnun type. Features of interest include the Jacobean pulpit, 1665, and two monuments, to R. Bennet (d. 1683) and in Coade stone to Richard Coffin (d. 1796)

In the 880s, Saxon priests controlled church estates like Polltun, Caellwic, Landwithan (Pawton, in St Breock) and Lawhitton. Eventually they passed these over to Wessex kings. These estates were granted to the Bishop of Sherborne to whose diocese Cornwall had been added. Landwithan included the parishes of Lawhitton, South Petherwin (with Dunheved, modern Launceston), Trewen and Lezant. In 1050 they passed to the Bishop of Exeter and remained a peculiar deanery of the Bishop until 1850. Consequently two-thirds of the parish of Lawhitton still belongs to the Church Commissioners. Until 1261 the benefice of Lawhitton consisted of a vicarage and a sinecure rectory; they were then combined as a rectory. From then until 1924 there were 60 rectors, of whom probably only 19 were resident.

The modern parish is part of Lezant with Lawhitton and South Petherwin with Trewen, United Benefice in the Diocese of Truro.

Civil Registration
Births, 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
Lawhitton 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.

Records are also available at the Cornwall Record Office.

Cornwall Online Parish Clerks
An extremely useful resource is the Cornwall Online Parish Clerks page for the parish.

Census records
Cornwall Online Census Project

Poor Law Unions
Launceston Poor Law Union

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Cornwall 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
There are many maps and gazetteers showing English places. Valuable web sites are:


 * England Jurisdictions 1851
 * Vision of Britain

Websites
Lawhitton in GENUKI