Whitehaven St James, Cumberland Genealogy

Guide to Whitehaven St James, Cumberland ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
WHITEHAVEN, a sea-port, market-town, newly enfranchised borough, and the head of a union, in the parish of St. Bees, Allerdale ward above Derwent, W. division of Cumberland, 40 miles (S. W.) from Carlisle. Whitehaven contains four chapels: St. James, St. Nicholas, Holy Trinity and Mount Pleasant. There are places of worship for Presbyterians, Particular Baptists, the Society of Friends, Independents, Wesleyans, Primitive Methodists, and Roman Catholics.

Church records
Parish Registers begin in 1753

Source: Hay, Daniel. Whitehaven: An Illustrated History. Whitehaven, Cumbria: Michael Moon. Revised and enlarged edition 1979 p. 105-6

The registers of St. James, Whitehaven : baptisms, 1753-1837

The Family History Library has the Bishop's transcripts to St James Chapelry registers from the year 1753 to 1878.

Online Records
Whitehaven St James parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

St Bees 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.

Non-Conformist Churches
None

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. Two popular sites are:


 * FreeBMD.
 * Cumberland BMD

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

Websites
Whitehaven on GENUKI