Wigan All Saints, Lancashire Genealogy

Guide to Wigan All Saints, Lancashire ancestry, family history, and genealogy: chapelry register transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records. See a List of Wigan Chapelries.

Parish History
WIGAN (All Saints),a parish, borough, and market town, which has separate jurisdiction, and the head of a union, chiefly in the hundred of West Derby, S. division of the county of Lancaster; containing, with the chapelries of Abram, Billinge, Haigh, Hindley, Pemberton, and Up Holland, and the townships of Aspull, Billinge Higher End, Dalton, Ince-in-Makerfield, Orrell, 18 miles west by northwest of Manchester. Wigan (St George's) church, in the town, was erected as a chapel of ease, in 1781. St. Catherine's church, at Scholes, of which the first stone was laid on the 6th April 1840. Both these churches have districts assigned to them. Wigan St Thomas's church, in the Queen-street, was erected in 1848. At Abram, Billinge, Haigh, Hindley, Holland, and Pemberton are also other chapels of the Church of the Church of England. In the town are places of worship for Baptists and Independents, a handsome meeting-house for Wesleyans, and a Scottish church. The Roman Catholics have two chapels; St Mary's, and St John's, built in 1819. In Scholes is St Patrick's Roman Catholic chapel.

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

 * 1538 - 1910 at FamilySearch — index

Online Records

Wigan All Saints parish registers and those registers of all of its smaller chapelries lying within its boundaries have been mostly transcribed and are displayed online at the following websites and ranges of years:

The ancient parish of Wigan All Saints has numerous additional chapelries including Abram subdividing its boundaries, which see.

Original Records
The Lancashire Record Office at Bow Lane, Preston PR2 1RE, holds the original parish registers in its vast collections. Contact their website for contact information.

The Family History Library has microfilmed the parish registers and Bishop's transcripts of Wigan parish for the years 1578-1900. These films are available for ordering/circulating and researching at any one of its satellite FamilySearch Centers worldwide.

Non Conformist Records

 * 1717 England & Wales, Roman Catholics, 1717 at FindMyPast ($), index and images (coverage may vary)
 * 1647-1996 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index (dates may vary by parish)

Genealogy
In Search of James Bethell. History and family tree of Thomas Bethell (Bithill) and Mary Sumner, dating from 1758-1878, other surnames included; Parr, Smedley, Hervey, Green, Lees, Pigby, to be found in The Lancashire Family History And Heraldry Society magazine. vol.13 no. 4, pages 31-36, FHL Ref. 942.72 B2r

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Lancashire Probate Records to find the name of the court having primary jurisdiction. Scroll down in the article to the section Court Jurisdictions by Parish.

Taxation

 * 1541 - 1541 Subsidy of Aspull (p. 143)
 * 1622 - 1622 Subsidy of Aspull (p. 162)

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