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England Warwickshire  Birmingham (city)

Guide to Birmingham history, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

also see A Comprehensive List of Birmingham Parishes and Chapels page).



History


Birmingham's early history is that of a remote and marginal area. The main centers of population, power and wealth in the pre-industrial English Midlands lay in the fertile and accessible river valleys of the Trent, the Severn and the Avon rivers. The area of modern Birmingham lay in between, on the upland Birmingham Plateau and within the densely wooded and sparsely populated Forest of Arden.

In the Middle ages, Birmingham was only a medium sized market town, with Warwick, Stratford-upon-Avon, and Worcester being much larger and more important towns.

Birmingham grew to international prominence in the 18th century at the heart of the Midlands Enlightenment and subsequent Industrial Revolution, which saw the town at the forefront of worldwide advances in science, technology and economic development, producing a series of innovations that laid many of the foundations of modern industrial society.

This growth was triggered by the development of England's canal system, a modern miracle of engineering and tunneling. Altogether more than 2,500 miles of waterways were built. At that time, the longest man made tunnel in the world for water transportation was the 2,760 yard long Wast Hills tunnel on the Worcester and Birmingham canal.

Canal building required a huge input of manual labor into the area, and, as the canals were built, this labor naturally gravitated to the new industrial establishments that were being built up along the canal waterways.

The canals had fallen into disuse and disrepair by the middle of the twentieth century, but, due to the vision and foresight of a few local groups, they have largely been rebuilt and serve today as a haven for canal boat residents and holiday-makers.

By 1791 it was being hailed as "the first manufacturing town in the world".

Today, it is the most populous British city outside London with 1,092,330 residents (2013 est.), and its population increase of 88,400 residents between the 2001 and 2011 censuses was greater than that of any other British local authority.

HISTORY
Birmingham's early history is that of a remote and marginal area. The main centers of population, power and wealth in the pre-industrial English Midlands lay in the fertile and accessible river valleys of the Trent, the Severn and the Avon. The area of modern Birmingham lay in between, on the upland Birmingham Plateau and within the densely wooded and sparsely populated Forest of Arden

In the Middle ages, Birmingham was only a medium sized market town, with Warwick, Stratford-upon-Avon, and Worcester being much larger and more important towns.

Birmingham grew to international prominence in the 18th century at the heart of the Midlands Enlightenment and subsequent Industrial Revolution, which saw the town at the forefront of worldwide advances in science, technology and economic development, producing a series of innovations that laid many of the foundations of modern industrial society. By 1791 it was being hailed as "the first manufacturing town in the world".

Today, it is the most populous British city outside London with 1,092,330 residents (2013 est.), and its population increase of 88,400 residents between the 2001 and 2011 censuses was greater than that of any other British local authority.

LOCATION
Birmingham is located in the center of the West Midlands region of England on the Birmingham Plateau – an area of relatively high ground, ranging between 500 and 1,000 feet (150–300 m) above sea level and crossed by Britain's main north-south watershed between the basins of the Rivers Severn and Trent.

Birmingham is drained only by minor rivers and brooks, primarily the River Tame and its tributaries the Cole and the Rea. This makes it ideally suited for the network of canals built during the Industrial Revolution, discussed later in the section on Industry.

RELIGION
Birmingham has no unique activities relative to the religion of the area, even in ancient times. The population seemed to follow the whims of the clerics, and were basically following the Roman Catholic persuasion until the times of Henry VIII. They accepted the royal decree without any major indications of rebellion, and thence were mainly adherents of the national Church of England.

INDUSTRY
Birmingham was essentially a backwater until the start of the Industrial Revolution in the mid 17th. century.

Because of its central location in the country, and also the essentially flatland surrounding the city, it rapidly became the hub of a national network of canals. These canals were used to transport materials and goods both in and out of the city conurbation. Horse drawn barges pulled these items on canals that reached London in the south, the River Severn in the West, and the Potteries and Liverpool and Manchester in the north.

These canals were not simple engineering feats but included lock building and tunnels far ahead of their times. Examples of these are the huge Waste Hills tunnel, drilled at a length of about 1.5 miles, and the great Tardebigge flight of locks, with 30 locks in a 2.5 length of canal.



In 1709 the Birmingham-trained Abraham Darby I moved to Coalbrookdale in Shropshire and built the first blast furnace to successfully smelt iron ore with coke, transforming the quality, volume and scale on which it was possible to produce cast iron. In 1732 Lewis Paul and John Wyatt invented roller spinning, the "one novel idea of the first importance" in the development of the mechanised cotton industry. In 1741 they opened the world's first cotton mill in Birmingham's Upper Priory. In 1746 John Roebuck invented the lead chamber process, enabling the large-scale manufacture of sulphuric acid, and in 1780 James Keir developed a process for the bulk manufacture of alkali, together marking the birth of the modern chemical industry.

Most significant, however, was the development in 1776 of the industrial steam engine by James Watt and Matthew Boulton. This freed for the first time the manufacturing capacity of human society from the limited availability of hand, water and animal power, and was arguably the pivotal moment of the entire industrial revolution and a key factor in the worldwide increases in productivity that would follow over the following century.

Birmingham continued in its leadership position well into the 20th. century, but the two world wars, together with the emergence of the USA's industrial might, saw the eclipse of Birmingham as a center of Industry. Today its importance is as a center of commerce, as well as the second most important center in the UK for service industries.

CEMETERIES
Birmingham cemeteries and crematoria

Find a Grave at Birmingham Yardley cemetery

tracing burials in Birmingham

Ancestry.com burial records

GENEALOGY AND FAMILY HISTORY
Birmingham and Midlands Genealogical Society

Birmingham city genealogy records

Genuki society records

Birmingham and region genealogy society