Croft, Herefordshire Genealogy

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

Parish History
CROFT (St. Michael), a parish, in the union of Leominster, hundred of Wolphy, county of Hereford, 5½ miles from Leominster.

Croft Castle and the associated Church of St Michael are described at Croft Castle Wikipedia

Croft is an Ancient Parish in Herefordshire; the church of St Michael is adjacent to Croft Castle near Yarpole, Herefordshire. The Ancient parish also includes Newton.

The church dates from the mid 14th century and has been designated a grade I listed building by English Heritage British listed building.

Croft Castle and the church are managed by the National Trust National trust website

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.

Church records
Croft 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.

The Herefordshire Archive and Records Centre houses many parish registers. See The records we hold for a list of records available there. How to contact them:
 * Herefordshire Archive and Records Centre Fir Tree Lane Rotherwas Hereford HR2 6LA Telephone: +44 (0)1432 260750 Email: [mailto:archives@herefordshire.gov.uk archives@herefordshire.gov.uk] Website: Herefordshire Archive and Records Centre

Census records
FamilySearch Records includes collections of census indexes which can be searched online for free. In addition FamilySearch Centres offer free access to images of the England and Wales Census through theFHC Portal page which gives free access to premium family history software and websites that generally charge for subscriptions.

Category:England Family History Centres to locate local Family History Centres in UK

Introduction to Family History Centers to locate outside UK.

Many archives and local history collections in public libraries in England and Wales offer online census searches and also hold microfilm or fiche census returns.

Images of the census for 1841-1891 can be viewed in census collections at Ancestry (fee payable) or Find My Past (fee payable)

The 1851 census of England and Wales attempted to identify religious places of worship in addition to the household survey census returns.

Ancestry UK Census Collection

Find my Past census search 1841-1901

Prior to the 1911 census the household schedule was destroyed and only the enumerator's schedule survives.

The 1911 census of England and Wales was taken on the night of Sunday 2 April 1911 and in addition to households and institutions such as prisons and workhouses, canal boats merchant ships and naval vessels it attempted to include homeless persons. The schedule was completed by an individual and for the first time both this record and the enumerator's schedule were preserved. Two forms of boycott of the census by women are possible due to frustration at government failure to grant women the universal right to vote in parliamentary and local elections. The schedule either records a protest by failure to complete the form in respect of the women in the household or women are absent due to organisation of groups of women staying away from home for the whole night. Research estimates that several thousand women are not found by census search.Find my Past 1911 census

Poor Law Unions
Leominster Poor Law Union, Herefordshire

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

Websites

 * Croft

Contributor: add any relevant sites that aren’t mentioned above.