Saltash, Cornwall Genealogy

England Cornwall  Cornwall Parishes



Parish History
SALTASH, or Essay, a market-town and chapelry, and formerly a representative borough, in the parish of St. Stephen, union of St. Germans, locally in the S. division of the hundred of East, E. division of Cornwall, 4 miles (N. N. W.) from Plymouth, 21 (S. S. E.) from Launceston, and 220 (W. S. W.) from London. There are places of worship for Baptists and Wesleyans.

Saltash St Nicholas and St Faith is an Ecclesiastical Parish and a market town in the county of Cornwall, created in 1815 from chapelry in St Stephens by Saltash, Cornwall.

The Borough of Saltash was founded by one of the de Valletorts, Lords of Trematon Castles, in the mid 12th century. The founder provided a large chapel for the town in the central market square of the new town. The Chapel was dedicated to St Nichols, patron Saint of travellers, sailors and safe journeys where an ancient highway crossed an important estuary by means of a ferry.

For more than 700 years St Nicholas’s Chapel was a chapel-of-ease, subordinate to the Mother Church of Stephen, although baptismal rights were acquired before the end of the Medieval period. During the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, Saltash Corporation increasingly took control, designating the building “the Corporation Chapel” and appointing Chaplains. There were many disputes, one case even reaching the Court of Arches, Canterbury, in 1752. The Chapel had no burial ground; until 1864 the Corporation permitted members of prominent families to be interred in the chapel.

St Nicholas became a Parish church in 1881 and the St Faith dedication recalled an earlier church in the town from the mediaeval period.

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 Free BMD.

Church records
Overview, Include information for parish registers and Bishop's Transcripts, Contact information for the office holding the original records, Links to the Family History Library Catalog showing the film numbers in their collection.

Images of parish registers are available online in historic records (formerly Record Search) Images refer to Cornwall County Record Office reference: P 203

Cornwall Online Parish Clerks
An extremely useful resource is the Cornwall Online Parish Clerks page for the parish http://www.cornwall-opc.org/Par_new/q_s/saltash.php

The history registers and much more have been contributed by the Online Parish clerk for Saltash Maggie Watkinson.

Census records
a.

Cornwall Online Census Project

Poor Law Unions
St Germans Poor Law Union

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