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Ancestry Daily News
3/11/2003 - Archive
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Churchwardens and their Accounts |
Churchwardens and their Accounts
Churchwardens were to be elected annually from among the ratepayers of the parish;
in most parishes there were two but in some places three or four, appointed
for the different townships of a large parish. Their duties expanded as more
civil responsibilities were assigned to the parish in the 1500s and 1600s. The
Compleat Parish Officer, originally published in 1734 (and reprinted by the
Wiltshire Family History Society in 1996) was a handbook for parish officials.
Reading about the work of these men reveals interesting aspects of parish life.
Among the duties of the churchwardens were the following:
See that parishioners came to church and behaved properly: this might include
searching the ale-houses, fining those who worked on Sunday, making sure people
behaved in an orderly way and took their hats off.
Assign the church pews.
Ensure that the parson read the Thirty-nine Articles twice each year; the
Thirty-nine Articles contained the statements of doctrine of the Church of England
and ministers had to subscribe to them in full.
Ensure the parish observed three special days, 30 January (execution of
Charles I), 29 May (return of Charles II) and 5 November (discovery of the Gunpowder
Plot).
See to the repairs of the church and steeple, gates, stiles, bells ropes,
etc. The tithes were intended to meet the costs of maintaining the church.
Make presentments at the church court twice each year. Presentments were
reports as to the state of repair of the church, the attendance of parishioners,
any nonconformists in the parish, etc.
Supervise the readiness of the parish to fight fires. There had to be a
fire engine and various items such as hoses and fire-cocks kept in good repair,
and rates could be assessed to maintain the equipment.
With the overseer, supervise the education, relief of poor, care of the
sick.
The minutes of the parish vestry (see ADN 17 Sep. 2002, "What is a Vestry?"—
www.ancestry.com/rd/prodredir.asp?sourceid=831&key=A634501
), and the account books maintained by the churchwardens, record decisions,
collections and disbursements of money. Very often they name people of the parish,
because they were paid for a job or given assistance of some kind.
The records are found among those of the parish chest. For the majority of parishes,
for which records survive, they will be in the county record office. Some have
been filmed and are in the Family History Library in Salt Lake City.
Using the parish of Compton in the county of Surrey as an example, here is a
series of steps that can be followed in order to discover what is in the record
office and what can be accessed through the FHL or family history centers. The
Surrey History Service entry includes a note that there are no restrictions
on access to this material.
1. Using Archives Online (ARCHON) at www.hmc.gov.uk/archon/
look for the website of the record office in Surrey; it is known as the Surrey
History Service and can be found at www.surreycc.gov.uk/surreyhistoryservice
2. Surrey has a catalog of its holdings online and it is possible to do a keyword
search; words used were 'compton churchwardens' (the search is not case sensitive).
3. Scan the list of results for the most likely entry.
4. Select and copy the listings for churchwardens' accounts (and any other records
of the parish that are of interest).
5. Search the Family History Library Catalog for the records noted at the Surrey
History Service; this produced a positive result as the churchwardens' accounts
were found but it could be seen that the vast majority of records relating to
the administration of the poor, the highways, church lands etc. are not in the
FHL.
By duplicating this exercise—for Surrey or any English county and without
regard to where you live—you can discover if records survive and decide how
to go about searching the churchwardens' accounts (or other parish records).
If the county record office does not yet have an online catalog, you will have
to write for details regarding a particular parish.
Being curious about the extent of churchwardens' records in the Family History
Library collection, I used the CD-ROM version of the FHLC and did a keyword
search for 'england churchwardens.' The result was 3,151 hits. This is a significant
number, perhaps a third of all parishes; however, unless the comparison to the
county holdings is done, there is no way of knowing what percentage of the records
for any particular parish has been filmed.
Until the separation of the civil and ecclesiastical parts of parish management
in the 1890s, the churchwardens were important people, in some ways more important
than the church minister. Their records are important to genealogists; they
may exist at a time when there are gaps in the registers or the details within
these records can be of great help if there is a long time between the birth
of the youngest child and the death of a parent. Accounts may be the only way
to confirm someone remained in a parish. In addition, keep in mind that there
were other parish officers; duties and records of overseers of the poor, surveyors
of highways and constables will be discussed in future articles.
Sherry Irvine, CGRS, FSA (Scot) has been researching her British ancestry
for thirty years. She is an instructor and study tour leader for Samford University's
IGHR, and teaches for the online family history program of Vermont College.
Sherry is President of the Association of Professional Genealogists. She is
the author of:
Your Scottish Ancestry: A Guide for North Americans
www.ancestry.com/rd/prodredir.asp?sourceid=831&key=P1046
Your English Ancestry: A Guide for North Americans
www.ancestry.com/rd/prodredir.asp?sourceid=831&key=P1045
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