By popular customer demand, we have made the following changes to the Search function:

• added the ability to specify a spouse’s first name during a marriage search, in combination with First Name, Last Name, or both. This should help narrow down the list of results for people searching common names. For example, you can now search for:
  • Alice Smith who married a George
  • George Wanless who married an Alice
  • any George to any Alice (this returns many results, so can be slow, but is useful if you have unusual first names and a hard-to-read surname)
  • any groom surname with any bride first name, or any bride surname with any groom first name
  • The new Spouse field is at the bottom of the Parish Record Options section of the Search form. This field is ignored during searches of all other records - it is only applied to Marriages and Marriage Bonds.
• under Display Options on the Search form, you can now sort your results by First Name, Birth Year, or Event Year. Previously, the second choice was “Year of Birth/Event”, which produced a confusing mixture of results, with some sorted by event year and some by birth year. Now, if you sort by Birth Year, your results are truly sorted by birth year if it is contained in the record and by Event Year only if it is not. Likewise, sorting by Event Year gives you the events in proper year order, no matter when the people were born.
• added Cemetery Records and Marriage Bonds as options to the Search In drop-down list. This allows you to search either the Cemetery Records or Marriage Bonds separately, without seeing results from the church burial register or marriage register. Searching in Burials will still include both burial register and cemetery records in the results, and searching in Marriages will include both marriage register entries and marriage bonds in the results, all marked appropriately so you can tell the difference.
• added Guisborough to the District list on the Search form so you can now limit your search to records in the Guisborough district
• rearranged the Search form so that Parish Record options come before Census Options, as more people seem to be using the parish record searches. Also rearranged the order of fields within the Parish Record options.

As usual, please let me know if I broke anything by adding the new code, or let me know if you like it or if it needs to be improved somehow.

Replaced the burial index for Wolsingham St. Mary & St. Stephen 1771-1851 with full details so those 3,167 burials are now immediately available.

533 baptisms at South Shields St. Hilda’s in 1821

3,808 burials at Sunderland Holy Trinity 1813-1821

155 baptisms from Dec 1867 to May 1886 at the Methodist New Connexion chapel at Houghall. This chapel primarily served Houghall Colliery plus some residents of Shincliffe and Durham city. Example:

• 6 Jun 1880 John James Turnbull, of Houghall, child of Robert Turnbull & Elenor, age 6 weeks 3 days

195 baptisms of dissenters between 1751 and 1782. This list was kept by Rev. Joseph Wilkinson and later Rev. G. Walker, of the Claypath Chapel in Durham City. These dissenters were probably Presbyterians and/or Congregationalists. Most resided in the City but some lived elsewhere, including Bishop Auckland, Brancepeth, Chester-le-Street, Cullercoates, Darlington, Fatfield, Hetton-le-Hole, Monkwearmouth, North Shields, Rainton, Stockton, Sunderland, and Tynemouth. There are no baptisms listed 1762 - Mar 1767 or Sep 1778 - May 1782.

Marriage bonds issued by the Durham Diocese 1681-1687 (1,028 bonds).  We now have all known surviving bonds from 1590-1687. No bonds exist for the period of 23 Mar 1686-31 Dec 1687.

Please read the Marriage Bonds section of the Transcription Samples page for a description of what information is found in bonds, allegations, and associated documents, and how we present that information.

The Diocese of Durham covered all of County Durham and parts of Northumberland and North Yorkshire.  Marriage bonds were not issued on a per-district basis, so the marriage bond database will only be searched if you choose All Districts.

These records are from Ron Nubley’s Index, which we are in the process of integrating into our collection, so when you buy one of these, you will immediately get the brief index entry, and the full entry will be transcribed and emailed to you within 3 days, at which point it becomes part of our database and you can view it again at any time.

1,436 marriages at Sunderland Holy Trinity 1800-1812

These marriages are from the microfilm of the original parish register and have also been checked against the Bishop’s Transcript, where, for reasons unknown to us, there is, in some cases, additional information. From August 1805 through Nov 1808, the Bishop’s Transcript lists the regiments of grooms who were soldiers - for example, “North Lincolnshire Militia”. This information is not mentioned in the original register, so we have no idea where the cleric who made the transcript for the Bishop of Durham obtained this information, but we thought it was valuable, so we included it with an explanatory note for each of these records. It is possible that the cleric kept a separate list of military marriages and combined the information into the transcript. We also made note of major differences between names recorded in the Bishop’s Transcript versus the original register. For example:

• 20 Jan 1807 Peter France of this parish (West York Militia) married Isabella [Elizabeth] Edger of this parish, by banns
  Witnesses: George Ramsden, Thomas Arlot
  [Note: Groom’s regiment from Bishop’s Transcript, which lists the bride as Elizabeth instead of Isabella.]

It was also interesting to note that the historic transcription made by Herbert Maxwell Wood contained errors and omissions - for example, in 1800 and 1801, he listed many grooms and brides as “of this parish” when in fact the register listed distant parishes for them, but after that, he listed the “outside” parishes correctly.

One final note: the marriages labeled 1809 in the Bishop’s Transcript were actually performed in 1808 per the register. The years 1802-1803 and 1809 through 1812 are missing from the Bishop’s Transcript, so we do not know if any additional information about regiments was available in those years.

• 476 baptisms from Dec 1896 to the end of 1904 on the Durham Primitive Methodist Circuit, which covered Durham City, Aldin Grange, Bearpark, Broomside, Carrville, Craghead, Crossgate, Daisy Hill, Edmondsley, Esh, Framwellgate, Gilesgate, Langley Park, Leamside, Moorsley (Low & High), Nevilles Cross, New Brancepeth, New Durham, Pittington (Low & High), Pity Me, Rainton Gate, Sacriston, Sherburn, Sleetburn, Ushaw Moor, Whitwell Pit, and Witton Gilbert.
• 152 baptisms from the Wolsingham Wesleyan Methodist Circuit from Aug 1866 to Mar 1870. Covers Boltsburn, Brecon Hill, Crawleyside, Eastgate, Frosterley, Rookhope, Stanhope, Sunnyside, Tow Law, Westgate, Wolf Cleugh, Wolsingham.

• 395 baptisms from 1864 to 1921 at Littletown Wesleyan Methodist Church (Durham district, near Pittington)
• 12 baptisms from 1939 to 1954 Dixon Street Primitive Methodist Church in Pittington. Any earlier registers from this church have supposedly been lost.