Jacobstow, Cornwall Genealogy

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

Parish History
JACOBSTOW (St. James), a parish, in the union and hundred of Stratton, E. division of Cornwall, 8½ miles SSW from Stratton. There are places of worship for Bryanites, Primitive Methodists, and Thornites.

Jacobstow St James is an Ancient Parish in the county of Cornwall and includes Penhallym in the north of the parish is mentioned (as Penhalun) in the Domesday Book; nearby is Penhallam, site of a medieval manor.

The name Jacobstow originates from Saxon times and derives from St James' (Latin Jacobus) and holy place As well as the church town, other settlements in the parish include Southcott and those parts of Canworthy Water north of the River Ottery.

Jacobstow parish church is dedicated to St James and there is evidence of a former Saxon church on the same site. The present church is of the 15th century with a nave and chancel and north and south aisles. The three-stage battlemented granite tower houses a ring of six bells. The font is Norman of the Altarnun type and the altar is an Elizabethan communion table

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
Jacobstow 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.

The history, registers and much more have been contributed by the Online Parish clerk for Jacobstow.

Census records
Cornwall Online Census Project

Poor Law Unions
Stratton 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
Jacobstow in GENUKI