Tranmere, Cheshire Genealogy

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

Parish History
TRANMERE, is a township and two chapelries in Bebington parish,The township lies on the Mersey, and on the Birkenhead and Chester railway, around Rock-Ferry railway station, from 2 to 3 miles S of Birkenhead; and has post-offices of Higher Tranmere and Lower Tranmere under Birkenhead. The chapelries are St. Catherine and St. Paul; and were constituted in 1842 and 1856. St. Catherine church which was built in 1831; St. Paul's church was built in 1856. A Scotch church, is in New Chester-road. A Wesleyan chapel, was built in 1862; and there are four other Methodist chapels, an Independent chapel, a Roman Catholic chapel''. ''

Tranmere St Catherine is an Ecclesiastical Parish in the county of Cheshire, created in 1842 from chapelry in Nether Bebington, Cheshire Ancient Parish.

Tranmere is a suburb of Birkenhead, on the Wirral Peninsula, Merseyside, England. Administratively, it is also a ward of the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral. Before local government reorganisation in 1 April 1974, it was part of the County Borough of Birkenhead, within the geographical county of Cheshire.

Its name was given by Norwegian Vikings who settled and colonised Wirral in the 10th century. Tranmere in Old Norse is Trani-melr, meaning "Cranebird sandbank" or "sandbank with the Cranebirds".

Tranmere Old Hall and its estate was situated around what is now Church Road. It was a large, gabled building constructed around 1614. According to the author Philip Sulley's The Hundred of Wirral (1889), in about 1860.

Church records
Tranmere St Catherine parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

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

Lower Tranmere St Luke 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 Cheshire Archives and Local Studies.

Non-Conformist Churches

 * Primitive Methodist
 * Protestant Dissenters
 * Roman Catholic
 * The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
 * Wesleyan Methodist
 * Independent Chapel

Non-Conformist records:

Wesleyan Methodist Church records: Cheshire Record Office: EMS 133/1/1

Walker Street Wesleyan Methodist Chapel church records: Cheshire Record Office: EMS 140/1/1-3.

Church records for the Old Chester Road Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, Lower Tranmere: Cheshire Record Office: EMS 133/1/1-2, 5

Church records for the Mt. Tabor Primitive Methodist Church: Cheshire Record Office call nos.: EMS 138/6/1-3.

Civil Registration
Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from 1 July 1837 to the present day. The civil registration article tells more about these records. Here are two excellent Internet sites with birth, marriage and death indexes available:


 * FreeBMD
 * Cheshire BMD

Registration Districts

 * Wirral (1837-61)
 * Birkenhead (1861-98)

Poor Law Unions
Wirral Poor Law Union, Cheshire

Birkenhead Poor Law Union, Cheshire

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Cheshire Probate Records to find the name of the court having primary jurisdiction. Scroll down in the article to the section Court Jurisdictions by Parish.

See also England Cheshire Probate Records - FamilySearch Historical Records

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
Tranmere on GENUKI