Wednesbury St James, Staffordshire Genealogy

England Staffordshire

Parish History
Wednesbury St James is an Ecclesiastical Parish in the county of Staffordshire, created in 1843 from Wednesbury_St_Bartholomew,_Staffordshire

Two new ecclesiastical parishes have been formed under the act 6th and 7th Victoria, cap. 37; called, respectively, St. John's and St. James'. St. John's church, consecrated in May 1846, is in the early English style, with a tower, and cost about £4000, partly defrayed by the Church Commissioners: the tower is temporarily covered with slate; the spire, when erected, will cost £500. The length of the edifice is 130 feet, the width 54 feet, and the height, to the apex of an open timbered roof, 50 feet: above one-half of the seats are free. The living is a perpetual curacy, in the patronage of the Crown and the Bishop of Lichfield, alternately; income, £200. St. James' church, of which the first stone was laid in May 1847, is also in the early English style, with a tower; it contains 870 sittings, and was erected at a cost of £2500. The living is a perpetual curacy, in the same patronage, with an income of £150. At Moxley is an incumbency for parts of Wednesbury, Darlaston, and Bilston parishes. There are places of worship for Baptists, Independents, Primitive Methodists, and Wesleyans. William, the first lord Paget, secretary of state to Henry VIII., was a native of the town.

From: A Topographical Dictionary of England (1848), pp. 494-498. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=51384 Date accessed: 03 April 2011.

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
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Census records
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Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Rutland 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
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 * England Jurisdictions 1851
 * Vision of Britain

Web sites
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