England Nonconformists Records of Congregationalists, Independents (National Institute)

Congregational/Independent Records
Records pertaining to the Congregational Union of England and Wales (CUEW) are now at Dr. Williams’ Library, and the archives of the Lancashire Independent College are at the John Rylands Library. Clifford has compiled an ‘almost exhaustive’ list of Congregational chapels founded before 1850, including dates and location of records in both major and minor archives. The individual Church Secretaries should be approached for other types of records and for post-1837 registers. Addresses can be obtained from the appropriate handbook, and probably from your public library and online.

Congregational and Independent Registers
Most surviving early registers are at the PRO, are filmed, and some transcriptions have been published.

Congregational and Independent Baptisms
Since so many Independent registers were turned in to the GRO and subsequently filmed by the GSU, there are a huge number of printout indexes on the FamilySearch Catalog. Some examples are shown here.

Chart/Independent/Congregational Baptisms

Congregational and Independent Burials A couple of examples of these are shown here.

Chart: Independent/Congregational Burials

The parish searchers who enquired into details of deaths often reported a cause, but as they were not medically qualified this was only a guess. The following certificate was found in the Vauxhall Independent Chapel register on Film 0,825,319; this chap seems to have had the whole business sewn up!

Chart: A Searcher’s Certificate

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Information in this Wiki page is excerpted from the online course English: Non-Anglican Church Records offered by The National Institute for Genealogical Studies. To learn more about this course or other courses available from the Institute, see our website. We can be contacted at [mailto:wiki@genealogicalstudies.com wiki@genealogicalstudies.com]

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