Oxfordshire, England Genealogy

Oxfordshire, or Oxon, is an inland county located roughly in the lower mid-section of 'England'.

Research Tools
The Oxfordshire Family History Society contains many valuable resources for researching in the parish of Oxfordshire. Free online information includes detailed parish maps, a surname interest list, some memorial transcriptions, and hundreds of will transcriptions, including original text, simplified modern day translations, and concise lists of the relationships detailed in the will. In addition, an extensive collection of Oxfordshire records has been transcribed by members and can be purchased from the society on CD or microfiche. These records include Census Indexes, Marriage Indexes, Parish Registers, Monumental Inscriptions, and Oxford City Guardians of the Poor reports. The Salt Lake City Family History Library has copies of the Parish Registers, but these records are restricted and cannot be sent out to LDS Family History Libraries in other locations. In addition, as of April 2010 they are not available on genealogy sites such as findmypast.co.uk or ancestry.co.uk.

Jurisdictions
Use an interactive mapto find jurisdictions for each parish in Oxfordshire.

Civil Districts
When civil registration of births, marriages and deaths began in 1837, Oxfordshire was divided into a number of registration districts, each containing several parishes. The index to the civil records gives the name of the district where an event took place. Click here to see a list of the civil districts in Oxfordshire and the parishes covered by each. Read more about England Civil Registration.

Parishes
See a list of the parishes of Oxfordshire with links to articles.

Probate Jurisdictions
Before 1858, every town and parish in Oxfordshire was under the probate jurisdiction of several ecclesiastical courts. Beginning in 1858, a civil system was established to probate the estates of deceased persons.

To read more about probate records and see a list of Oxfordshire towns and parishes and the probate courts that had jurisdiction over them, go to Oxfordshire Probate Records.

Did You Know?
The Oxford County records office is in a converted Church of England chapel on the outskirts of Oxford.

St Luke's Church, Temple Road, Cowley, Oxford OX4 2HT

It has some excellent indexes and transcripts of most parish records throughout the county.

It seems as though it was a popular thing for University Students to do for a project - prepare a transcription of all the records for a particular parish. With these fully indexed typewritten transcripts you do not have to worry about interpreting hand writing or ploughing through page after page of entries that have nothing to do with your family - just check in the index for names within the timescale you are interested in, and you should be able to very quickly identify those you are looking for.

Websites
Oxfordshire Surnames Listings

Kingston Bagpuize with Southmoor

To view a further list of web sites and/or web pages for Oxfordshire and many of its parishes, visit FHLFavorites.info.