Stockport, Cheshire Genealogy

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

Parish History
STOCKPORT (St. Mary), a newly-enfranchised borough, a market-town, and parish, and the head of a union, in the hundred of Macclesfield, N. division of the county of Chester; comprising the chapelries of Distley, Dukinfield , Hyde , Marple , Norbury , and Romiley , and the townships of Bramhall , Bredbury , Brinnington , Etchells , Offerton , Stockport , Torkington , and Werneth. The town derived its name Stokeport, or Stockport.

St Mary's church was mainly re-built in 1817. St Peter's district church was built in 1768. The church dedicated to St Thomas was erected in 1825. A church district, called St Matthew, was formed in 1844. An Independent chapel was built in 1866, for Baptists, Wesleyans, the New Connexion of Methodists, the Society of Friends, Primitive and Warrenite Methodists, Unitarians, and the Roman Catholic chapel was built in 1862.

The parish is ecclesiastically cut into the sections of Stockport-St. Mary, Stockport-St. Thomas, Stockport-St. Peter, Bredbury, Disley, Dukinfield, Dukinfield-St. Mark, Dukinfield-St. Matthew, Castle-Hall, High-Lane, Hyde, Hyde-St. Thomas, Marple, Norbury, Portwood, Romiley, Werneth, and Moor.

See: Stockport St Alban, Stockport St Augustine, Stockport (Brinksway) St Augustine, Stockport St George, Stockport St Mark, Stockport St Mary, Stockport St Matthew, Stockport St Peter, Stockport St Saviour, Stockport St Thomas, and Stockton Heath.

Church Records
Stockport St Mary the Virgin registers of christenings, marriages and burials have been indexed by the following groups:

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

Stockport Portwood St Paul registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

To find the names of the neighbouring parishes, use England Jurisdictions 1851. In this site, search for the name of the parish, click on the location "pin", click Options and click List contiguous parishes.

Here is a list of parish registers on microfilm at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City.

Parish registers of St. Mary's Church, Stockport, 1584-1901 Cheshire Record Office call no.: P14/1/2-11, P14/2/1-8, P14/3435/2/1-4, P14/4616/1, P14/3435/1, P14/3/1-17, P14/3435/3/1-24, P14/4616/2-3, P14/4/1-5, P14/3790/1-2, P14/4649/1-6, P14/5/1-8, P14/3435/4/1-2.

Bishop's transcripts for Stockport, 1605-1844 Microfilm of manuscripts in the Cheshire Record Office, Chester, England.

Records are not in strict chronological order. Some years are missing

Non-Conformist Churches

 * 1717 England & Wales, Roman Catholics, 1717 at FindMyPast ($), index and images (coverage may vary)
 * 1600s-1910 Cheshire Non-Conformist & Roman Catholic Registers (Baptism) 17th Century-1910 at FindMyPast ($); index and images (dates may vary by parish)
 * 1600s-1910 Cheshire Non-Conformist & Roman Catholic Registers (Burials) 17th Century-1910 at FindMyPast ($); index and images (dates may vary by parish)

Civil Registration
Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from 1 July 1837 to the present day. The civil registration article tells more about these records. Here are two excellent Internet sites with birth, marriage and death indexes available:


 * FreeBMD
 * Cheshire BMD

Registration Districts

 * Stockport

Poor Law Unions

 * For more information on the history of the workhouse, see Peter Higginbotham's web site: www.workhouses.org.uk and Stockport

Probate Records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Cheshire Probate Records to find the name of the court having primary jurisdiction. Scroll down in the article to the section Court Jurisdictions by Parish.

see also England Cheshire Probate Records - FamilySearch Historical Records

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
Stockport on GENUKI