West Bromwich St James (formerly Hill Top), Staffordshire Genealogy

Guide to West Bromwich St James (formerly Hill Top), Staffordshire ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
Hill Top was an Ecclesiastical Parish in the county of Staffordshire, created in 1844 from West Bromwich All Saints, Staffordshire Ancient Parish and referred to as West Bromwich St. James (see church records)

BROMWICH, WEST (All Saints), a town and parish, and the head of a union, in the hundred of Offlow South, S. division of the county of Stafford, situated about 6 miles (N. W.) from Birmingham, 4 miles (E.) from Dudley, and 4 (S.) from Walsall; adjoining the town of Wednesbury. There are many places of worship for dissenters of different denominations. The Wesleyans have five meeting-houses, the Independents have four meeting-houses, the Baptists two, the Roman Catholics one; and the Primitive Methodists, Ranters, and others, have four or five small places of meeting.

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.

See West Midlands BMD and Staffordshire BMD

Church records
West Bromwich St James (formerly Hill Top) 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 Staffordshive Record Office.

Poor Law Unions
West Bromwich Poor Law Union,Staffordshire

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