Great Harwood, Lancashire Genealogy

Guide to Great Harwood, Lancashire ancestry, family history, and genealogy: chapelry register transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Chapelry History
HARWOOD, GREAT, a township and chapelry, in the parish, union, and Lower division of the hundred, of Blackburn, N. division of Lancashire, 4½ miles northeast of Blackburn. The chapelry comprises part of the township of Rishton and the township of Harwood was divided into Over and Nether town. The chapel, is dedicated to St. Bartholomew. In this township were built, chapels for Independents, Wesleyans, Primitive Methodists, and Roman Catholics.

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.

Online Records

 * 1538 - 1910 at FamilySearch — index
 * 1603 - 1910 at FamilySearch — index and images

 Church of England 

Great Harwood chapelry's registers of christenings, marriages and burials, along with those of the ancient parish of Blackburn to which it is attached, have been mostly transcribed and are displayed online at the following web sites and ranges of years:

For a full list of all those chapels surrounding Great Harwood and comprising the whole ancient parish of Blackburn to which it was attached, be certain to see "Church Records" on the BLACKBURN ST MARY PARISH page.

Non Conformist Records

 * 1647-1996 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index (dates may vary by parish)

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