DURHAM PARISH REGISTERS 1798 to 1812

by John Ayton

Many researchers from the North East must feel as 1 do. Having worked back through censuses, they have the parish registers to look forward to. I feel that we are particularly fortunate in some Northumberland and Durham registers when we look at those records, which were written between 1798 and 1812, as the details given in the baptisms are often wonderful for the family historian. Most registers give the parish of birth of the father and, if you are lucky, the name and job of the mother's father.

I was recently researching my ancestors in the parish of Stanhope and I realised how lucky I was. The registers are beautifully written and very informative. However, it was not the baptism details, which give me my break, but those for the burials. There, I found the entry for the burial of one of my 5 x great grandmothers, Elizabeth Robinson. She had married my 5 x great grandfather Theophilus Norwood in June 1770 and was his second wife. He was a lead miner and his first wife had recently died. I had estimated that Elizabeth's date of birth would have been about 1745 to 1750. But I could find no evidence of an Elizabeth Robinson on the I.G.I. between those years. I'd rather given up and felt that I was at a dead end. Her burial entry, some years later, was however most illuminating - "Elizabeth Norwood, late Robinson, widow of Theophilus Norwood, miner on April 7th 1810 aged 81 years." This was definitely my ancestor as she was the wife of Theophilus Norwood and I knew he was a miner. The surprise was Elizabeth's age - 81. I now realised that she had been born a lot earlier than I had previously estimated, probably in 1728 or 1729. I returned to the I.G.I. and found only one Elizabeth Robinson, baptised on 6th August 1728 at Stanhope. She was the daughter of a George Robinson of Heathery and this took my research back into the 1600's. Many of us realise that our ancestors continued having children until their fertility failed. However, I am sure that lots of us must think that beginning our families in our forties is something of a modern phenomenon and rather unusual. Here I had an ancestress marrying for the first time in 1770 aged 41 to a man nearly 10 years her junior. Perhaps Theophilus just married his young children's minder. Elizabeth then proceeded to have her own family - Theophilus Junior baptised on 8th September 1771 and my ancestor Robert baptised on 11th September 1774, born in Elizabeth's forty-sixth year. It makes us all look old hat. She lost both Theophiluses in the 1780’s and life must have been hard but she lived to a good age. Her son Robert had 12 children of which I am aware and she must have seen 10 of them. Family historians can go gleefully into all the records between 1798 and 1812. You never know what you'll find. We've always known how lucky we were to have a Northern Ancestor.

Editors Note

Yes, you will find that the registers for 1798 to 1812 are particularly helpful in your researches. The Bishop of Durham, Shute Barrington, gave detailed orders to the parishes in his Diocese (County Durham, most of Northumberland, and Alston in Cumberland)) to include a lot of extra information. Baptism entries, in particular, contain extra details, which help immensely. For example, William Thomas Robson was born on the 29^th December 1802 and baptised in St Hilda’s Parish Church South Shields on 6^th February 1803. His father was Thomas Robson, occupation Boatman, and his mother maiden name of Young was also provided Unfortunately Parliament passed the Rose Act in 1812 that lead to all Parishes keeping standard registers that requested fewer details than those that Shute Barrington had requested of his Parishes.