Over one million Cambridgeshire parish records go online at findmypast.co.uk

Leading UK family history website findmypast.co.uk has today published over one million parish records, in association with the Federation of Family History Societies. Significantly, these new online records pre-date civil birth, marriage, death and census records enabling family history enthusiasts to delve even further back into their Cambridgeshire ancestors’ pasts from the convenience of their own home.

The Cambridge parish records include 418,635 baptism records, 242,732 marriage records and 335,186 burial records dating from 1538-1950. The records also contain 103,552 marriage banns records, enabling the public to search for impending marriage announcements between 1653 and 1950. The vast quantity of these records and the wide date range make them a hugely valuable resource for family historians. 

Previously, a researcher had the arduous task of finding out where in the country their ancestors came from and then contacting the relevant record office or family history society for that area.  The search facility at findmypast.co.uk now makes it possible to look up ancestors across all the parish records on the site just by entering a surname, making it much faster and easier for people to research their family history, even if they don’t know where in the country they came from.

Many interesting characters can be found in the Cambridgeshire parish records, for example, the daughters and wife of Olaudah Equiano, aka Gustavus Vassa, one of the most prominent Africans involved in the abolition of the slave trade.  Olaudah bought his freedom and wrote a book about his life as a slave, which helped to bring about the abolition.  Once Olaudah became a freedman he moved to Soham in Cambridgeshire and married a local girl; in the records you can find the baptisms of Olaudah’s daughters and the burial of his wife.  These records demonstrate Britain’s change in attitude towards slavery and how slaves and their descendants began to be recorded in parish and community documents.    

Debra Chatfield, Marketing Manager at findmypast.co.uk said: “It is fantastic that we are able to make these records available to search online for the very first time. Now these records are online, it will be possible for anyone to find out if they had Cambridgeshire ancestors just by entering a surname. They will then be able to see a faithful transcript of the details from the original parish register, which in some cases could be up to 470 years old."