Rufford, Lancashire Genealogy

Guide to Rufford, Lancashire ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish register transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
RUFFORD St Mary, a parish, in the union of Ormskirk, hundred of Leyland, N. division of Lancashire, 5½ miles northeast by north of Ormskirk. The Wesleyans have a place of worship.

Other places in the parish include: Holmes-wood. Rufford is a village in West Lancashire, England. It lies at a point where the Leeds and Liverpool Canal (Rufford Branch), the Liverpool, Ormskirk and Preston Railway, the A59 (Liverpool to Preston road) and the River Douglas all meet. Rufford is also a civil parish, which includes the neighbouring village of Holmeswood. St. Mary the Virgin, on Church Road, which was founded before 1346. The church is of brick, with a bell-cupola. There is also a Wesleyan Methodist church on Brick Kiln Lane, which was founded before 1893.



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.

Online index of Lancashire Births, Marriages and Deaths Lancashire BMD

Lancashire Online Parish Clerks
An extremely useful resource for research in Lancashire Parishes http://www.lan-opc.org.uk/

Online Records

 * 1538 - 1910 at FamilySearch — index
 * 1603 - 1910 at FamilySearch — index and images

Rufford St. Mary 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:

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 Rufford St. Mary parish for the years 1691-1828. 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)

Catholic

 * 1628 - 1628 List of Recusants in Rufforthe (p. 174)

Poor Law Unions
Ormskirk Poor Law Union, Lancashire

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

 * 1628 - 1628 Subsidy of Rufforth (p. 165) J.P. Earwaker, Three Lancashire Subsidy Rolls, viz., for the Hundred of Salford, 1541, the Hundred of Salford, 1622 and the Hundred of Leyland, 1628, Together with a Recusant Roll for the Hundred of Leyland, in 1628 (London: Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 1885). Digital version at FamilySearch Digital Library.
 * 1665 - Lancashire Hearth Tax: Leyland Hundred, Rufford. E 179/132/351, The National Archives. Microfilm:.

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