England, Durham Diocese Bishops' Transcripts - FamilySearch Historical Records

England Durham

What is in the Collection?
This collection consists of church records from County Durham for the years from 1639-1919. The collection also includes records from select parishes in the counties of Northumberland, York, and Cumberland. More images will be added as they become available.

In its most basic sense, a parish register is a record of religious ordinances performed in the Church of England. Beginning in 1538, every parish priest was required to write down certain information about every baptism (officially termed “christening” in Anglican use), marriage, and burial that took place in his parish over the course of each year. He was then supposed to bind these pages into a single volume, thereby annually producing a comprehensive history of his ministerial efforts. After 1754, a new law required that marriages be recorded in a separate book, and banns—public proclamations of a couple’s intent to marry—were to be recorded in yet another book. Starting in 1812, pre-printed registers were introduced, and separate registers were then kept for baptisms, marriages, and burials. It should also be noted that many parish records were not kept during the Interregnum, 1649-1660, due to temporary changes in the hierarchy of the Church of England.

Due to this long and relatively stable tradition, parish registers are central to English genealogical research as they are often one of the only sources for finding families and individuals in England before the start of civil registration in 1837.

As one of the 39 historic counties of England, County Durham has a long history. From the time of the Norman Conquest, the county was governed by a series of bishops who had been endowed with great secular authority by royal decree, making the city of Durham one of the foremost centers of both religious and political influence in the north of England. This eminence lasted until the nineteenth century when the bishops of Durham were stripped of the bulk of their secular powers.

For a list of parishes which historically made up this county, see the Durham Parishes page.

Collection Content
This collection contains mixed baptism, marriage, and burial records.

What Can This Collection Tell Me?
The following lists indicate potential information given in each type of record. It must be remembered that every record may not provide all the listed information, as the procedures for keeping parish records evolved considerably over the centuries after 1538. It must also be noted that individual parishes often developed record-keeping traditions unique to themselves.

How Do I Search the Collection?
As you are searching it is helpful to know such information as your ancestor’s given name and surname, some identifying information such as residence, age, year/place of birth, parish and family relationships, such as the names of their parents. Remember that there may be more than one person in the records with the same name as your ancestor and that your ancestor may have used nicknames or different names at different times.

To browse by image: To search the collection you will need to follow this series of links: ⇒ Select "Browse through images" on the initial collection page ⇒ Select the appropriate "Place" ⇒ Select the appropriate "Parish" ⇒ Select the appropriate "Year range" which will take you to the images.

Search the collection by image comparing the information with what you already know about your ancestors to determine if the image relates to them. You may need to look at several images and compare the information about the individuals listed in those images to your ancestors to make this determination.


 * Marriage records sometimes state the residence for the bride and groom. You can use this information to look for their baptisms and to identify the children of this couple.
 * Sometimes the groom’s occupation is listed, which could help you find more records about the groom. Marriage records after 1754, list the names of witnesses, who were often family members. These can help you identify your ancestor’s family.
 * Signatures in the records might be used to identify a particular individual by the handwriting style.
 * After 1812, and sometimes before, burial records include the age of the deceased. Use this age to approximate the person’s birth year and to find the baptismal record.
 * If the deceased is a child, the parents’ names might be given. This information helps to extend your family another generation.
 * Banns indicate the parish of residence of the bride and groom. This information often leads to the records of another parish. You can search for the baptisms of the bride and groom in the parishes of residence since these might also be the parishes where they were born.
 * Baptism or christening records list the parents’ names, making it possible for you to connect your ancestor to an earlier generation. You may find a birth date listed or be able to approximate a birth date.

I Can't Find Who I'm Looking For, Now What?

 * Bishops’ transcripts are a backup source for parish registers that are missing or illegible. If possible, you may want to search both the parish registers and the bishops’ transcripts since one is a handwritten copy of the other and might contain differences.
 * After 1812, the baptismal records list a place of residence, making it easier to identify your family by where they lived. The records also list the father’s occupation, which makes it easier to identify your ancestor's family when more than one family with the same name lived in the parish.

General Information About These Records
Church of England parish registers are one of the best sources for identifying individuals and connecting them to parents, spouses, and other generations. In July 1837, the government instituted the civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths. However, parish registers continue to play an important role because they are often more readily available than civil registers. Information in parish registers and bishops’ transcripts can be verified against each other.

Parish registers were created to record church events of baptism or christening, marriage, and burial. Baptismal entries usually list the person’s birth date, and burial entries list the death date. In the Church of England, baptism, which was also called christening, was performed soon after the birth of a child. Marriage in the church legally united a man and a woman for civil legal reasons and for the purpose of founding a religiously sanctified family. Burial is a function of the church to inter the deceased soon after death.

North Durham is explained in the linked wiki article and a history of the transcripts Howe Manuscript. There are certain transcript pages at present marked as "unknown" in Historical Records, which represent detached transcript pages at the time of digital image collection. Since each page of transcripts is identified by a parish and transcript number these will be relocated in future by engineering the image collection and the "unknown" section simple houses the image until this can be achieved.

The Durham Diocese transcript collection is fragmented Durham Bishop's Transcripts: The Howe Manuscript Collection outlines the local collection and storage history for the Diocese. Durham Transcripts were also affected by geographical boundary changes. North Durham references in the Durham Bishop’s Transcripts collection 1700-1900 explains the background to the inclusion of parishes and burial Grounds in Cumberland and North Yorkshire, as well as the designation of certain Northumberland parishes.

The Durham Transcripts were deposited in 1951 with the Durham University Library Special Collections. In this phase they were organised chronologically by parish name and each parish was cataloged with a reference prefixed DDR/EA/BT and then pages were sequenced in a numerical order. Thus the parish of Aycliffe:

Aycliffe (Durham) Reference number: DDR/EA/PBT/2/14 Date: 1762-1877 will have page sequences DDR/EA/PBT/2/14/1 for 1762 to DDR/EA/PBT/2/14/474 for 1877

Known Issues with This Collection
For a full list of all known issues associated with this collection see the attached article. If you encounter additional problems, please email them to [mailto:support@familysearch.org support@familysearch.org]. Please include the full path to the link and a description of the problem in your e-mail. Your assistance will help ensure that future reworks will be considered.

Citing this Collection
Citing your sources makes it easy for others to find and evaluate the records you used. When you copy information from a record, list where you found that information. Here you can find citations already created for the entire collection and for each individual record or image.

Collection Citation:

Image Citation: