The Family Tree Academy is here to help you grow your genealogy skills. The aim is to help teach more about the search skills and source know-how needed to step up your family history research. In this issue, Family Tree Academy tutor David Annal examines the records of our Nonconformist ancestors
The back story
For almost 300 years, from the introduction of parish registers by Thomas Cromwell in 1538, until the establishment of the civil registration system in 1837, the Church of England’s parish registers of baptisms, marriages and burials formed the only legally valid records of births, marriages and deaths in England and Wales.
Registering these vital events was seen as the Anglican church’s natural area of responsibility – as was the case when it came to proving our ancestors’ wills and, indeed, many other matters relating to their day-to-day lives.
Before Henry VIII’s break from Rome, this lack of separation between church and state was only rarely questioned, but from the mid-16th century and, especially, following the growth of protestant nonconformity in the 17th century, an increasing percentage of the population no longer saw themselves as being members of the Church of England community.
The new denominations
This led to
