St Clement, Cornwall Genealogy

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

Parish History
CLEMENT'S (ST.), a parish, in the union of Truro, W. division of the hundred of Powder and of the county of Cornwall.

St Clement is an Ancient Parish in the county of Cornwall. Other places in the parish include: Malpas.

The old name of this place is Moresk and there was a castle here in Norman times. The manor of Moresk was one of the 17 Antiqua maneria of the Duchy of Cornwall. The church is mediaeval. The tower, in three stages, is built of slate and has a datestone for 1326 which corresponds to the style of building (however the third stage is of a later date). The rest of the church was decayed by the 1860s so most of the present fabric is from 1865 (however certain parts show genuine 13th-century work). The north transept has an arch matching the arcade of the south aisle (six bays in granite, nearly semi-circular arches and standard piers with elaborate capitals). There are two notable monuments: to Samuel Thomas (d. 1796), the work of John Bacon, 1799, has two allegorical figures; the other is to Rear-Admiral Robert Carthew Reynolds, from the studio of Micali, Livorno, and shows a young soldier and two women, the soldier points to a monument with a naval battle, above is the portrait medallion. The battle is probably the engagement with the Droits de l'Homme. Captain Reynolds commanded the frigate Amazon in the Action of 13 January 1797 when, in company with HMS Indefatigable, the frigates engaged and drove ashore the much larger French ship of the line Droits de l'Homme. In the heavy storm in which the battle was fought, Amazon became unmanageable and was also wrecked, although the frigate was beached and all but six of her men survived, unlike her larger opponent which was run onto a sandbar and destroyed with hundreds of lives lost.

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 Free BMD.

Church records
St Clement 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 Parish Clerks page for the parish.

The history, registers and much more have been contributed by the Online Parish clerk for St Clement.

Census records
Cornwall Online Census Project

Poor Law Unions
Truro Poor Law Union

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:


 * England Jurisdictions 1851
 * Vision of Britain

Websites
St Clement in GENUKI