Rayleigh, Essex Genealogy

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

Parish History
Rayleigh, or Raleigh, is a village, a parish, and a sub-district, in Rochford district, Essex. The village stands 4 miles NNE of Benfleet railway station and 4½ miles W by N of Rochford. It has a post-office under Chelmsford. There is a Baptist chapel.

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

Non-Conformist Churches

 * 1613-1971 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index (dates may vary by parish)
 * Particular Baptist
 * Wesleyan Methodist

Poor Law Unions

 * Rochford 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
Rayleigh on GENUKI

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