Ruan Major, Cornwall Genealogy

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

Parish History
RUAN MAJOR (St. Ruan), a parish, in the union of Helston, W. division of the hundred of Kerrier and of the county of Cornwall, 8 miles (S. S. E.) from Helston.

The parish is named for its patron saint Ruan or Rumon and called Major to distinguish it from its smaller neighbour, Ruan Minor (once, Ruan Parvus). These parishes share their patron saint with another Cornish parish, Ruan Lanihorne.

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 FreeBMD.

Church records
Ruan Major 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.

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 websites are:


 * 1851 Jurisdiction Maps
 * Vision of Britain

Websites
Ruan Major in GENUKI