User:Iluvhistory66/Sandbox/England Jurisdictions Revamp


 * Parish
 * County
 * Civil Registration District
 * Diocese
 * Rural Deanery
 * Poor Law Union
 * Hundred
 * Province
 * Division

Jurisdictions 1851: Parish County Civil Registration District Diocese Rural Deanery Poor Law Union Hundred Province Division

Check and understand the Chapman Code

Example: Derbyshire

Parish - Glossop County - Derbyshire Civil Registration District - Hayfield Diocese - Court of the Bishop of Lichfield (Episcopal Consistory) Rural Deanery - Lichfield Poor Law Union - Glossop Hundred - High Peake Province - Canterbury Division -

Jurisdictions Explained
NEW PAGE: A jurisdiction is an area governed by a system of laws. Each jurisdiction has a geographic boundary with some type of authority (i.e., manor, parish, town, county). This authority has the power to apply and enforce the laws. In England birth, marriage, death, census, and other genealogical records are organized and stored in different governmental levels such as parish, town, and county. =Jurisdictions Pre-1974=

Ancient Parish
Parish, the smallest unit of ecclesiastical and administrative organization in England. During the 7th and 8th centuries, groups of priests organized large church areas to better serve their parishioners. Throughout the 10th and 12th centuries these large areas were divided into smaller areas by landowners who built more local churches to serve the needs of their families, tenants, and servants. These smaller territories developed into the formal parish system.

Ecclesiastical Parish
Ecclesiastical parishes originated in the Medieval period when tithes were paid by the parish inhabitants to support the Church. These units were distinguished from the Civil Parishes after 1597 with the passing of the first Poor Relief Act. This Act also led to many subordinate areas, such as chapelries, being raised to parochial rank and the creation of many new parishes.
 * Chapelry:

A subsidiary place of worship to the main parish church. A chapelry also had a role in civil government, being a subdivision of a parish, which was used as a basis for the Poor Law until the establishment of England and Wales Poor Law Records 1834-1948 in the 19th century.

Civil Parish
A civil parish is used for local government jurisdictions. Civil and ecclesiastical parishes were formally split into two types in the 1860s. These two types of parishes are now entirely separate. Civil parishes are governed by a parish council or parish meeting, which exercises a limited number of functions. There are currently no civil parishes in Greater London and in a few other England locations.

County
The counties of England are areas used for different purposes, which include administrative, geographical, cultural, and political boundaries. The county was the basic unit of regional mapping from the mid-16th to the mid-19th centuries. FamilySearch uses England county historic boundaries pre-1974. The records dating before 1974 are located within the information found in the historic counties. This practice better assists our patrons who are researching their ancestors before the modern time period.

Civil Registration District
A registration district in England is a type of administrative region which exists for the purpose of civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths and civil partnerships. It has also been used as the basis for the collation of census information. Parliament recognized the need to keep accurate records for voting, planning, taxation, and defense purposes. Legislation was passed to create a civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths. England and Wales registration began on 1 July 1837, for births, marriages, divorces, and deaths. However, this new law did not have universal coverage until tougher laws were passed in 1874. For more information see England Civil Registration.

Diocese
The diocese was the basic geographical division of the church from the earliest times. The diocese system established by the Normans, in the eleventh century remained until the nineteenth century, altered only slightly in the sixteenth century.

Rural Deanery
Rural deaneries are very ancient and originally corresponded with the hundreds (see Hundreds definition below). From the twelfth and thirteenth centuries dioceses were divided into archdeaconries, and these were in turn divided into rural deaneries. Deaneries originally comprised about ten parishes.

Poor Law Union
The Poor Law Unions, enacted in 1834, brought neighboring parishes together for the purpose of relieving the burden of administrating relief to the poor. The Poor Law Unions and their workhouses took over this responsibility from the Church of England parishes. These unions were considered a type of government unit which were managed by a board of guardians.

Hundred
A hundred was a division of a shire (county) which was used for administrative, military, and judicial purposes. A hundred was introduced by the Saxons before the 12th century and was used until the 19th century Before the Local Government Act 1894 when the district was introduced, the hundred was the sole assessment unit (size) between parish and county.

Ecclesiastical Province
Ecclesiastical Provinces are the basic form of jurisdiction within most Christian churches. The Church of England has divided England into two ecclesiastical provinces, namely the Province of York (the Northern Province) and the Province of Canterbury (the Southern Province).

Division
Some of the counties have major subdivisions. Of these, the most significant are the divisions of Yorkshire: the East Riding, West Riding, North Riding and the ainsty of York. Since Yorkshire is so big, its ridings became established as geographical terms quite apart from their original role as administrative divisions. The second largest county, Lincolnshire, was divided into three historic "parts": Parts of Lindsey, Holland and Kesteven. Other divisions include the special status of Tower Hamlets within Middlesex, those of Sussex into East Sussex and West Sussex and Suffolk into East Suffolk and West Suffolk, and, more informally and hence more vaguely, of Kent into East Kent and West Kent.

Interactive Map
FamilySearch has an interactive map of the 1851 jurisdictions of England. This map allows the user to choose a jurisdiction (such as a county, parish, or diocese) then choose different nearby jurisdictions (like hundred, rural deanery, or province) to see where vital records were housed. A table pops up showing what years parish registers exist, the names of other associated jurisdictions, and other similar search tools. =Jurisdictions Post-1974=

OLD TEXT: When doing genealogical research, records will be organised by and make reference to various types of administrative units. Some knowledge of these can be useful to understand the records.

Interactive Map
FamilySearch has a very useful map of English jurisdictions as they stood in 1851. This map is interactive, allowing the user to display of map of a selected type of jurisdiction, and to click on an area and see which of the other jurisdictions it belongs to, and the years that Anglican Church Records start.

Historic counties (pre-1974)
England was divided into 40 counties, the highest traditional unit of subdivision in England. These boundaries remained roughly unchanged until reforms in 1974. Their use is preferred in genealogy to the Ceremonial Counties of post-1974.

Abbreviations (Champman codes)
For a list of England pre-1974 counties and their standard abbreviations see the articles County Abbreviations and Chapman Code, created by Dr. Colin Chapman, or go to GENUKI.

Ceremonial counties
From 1974 onwards, ceremonial counties have become an important unit of subdivision in England. England now has a two-tier system of counties and districts(sometimes boroughs or Royal Boroughs). These ceremonial counties correspond roughly to the old counties, with the exceptions that Manchester, Birmingham and London now have their own counties. These ceremonial counties do not necessarily have any administrative purposes today, for in many the County Council has been abolished and all local governance is now on managed on the district level.

Parishes
The basic unit until the late nineteenth century in England was the parish. Church Records and Censuses were generally arranged by parish, and Registration Districts for Civil Registration and Poor Law Unions for poor relief were generally created by merging several parishes together. Parishes have now been abolished in many areas, but there is a growing trend of re-establishing parishes as the very lowest level of local government.

Registration Districts
Civil Registration is based on the Registration District. These usually covered multiple parishes merged together. When searching indexes of civil registration you will need to know what registration district the birth, marriage or death you are looking for occurred in.

Their boundaries changed frequently over the years. Fortunately the website GENUKI has a database of England Registration Districts that covers at least up to 1974.

Hundreds
See England Hundreds

The Hundred is a very old subdivision of a County used in some records, notably the 1841 Census.