Family history website Ancestry has digitised over four million Berkshire parish records in a major boost for researchers with ancestors from the county.
The website has added four new record sets: 2,055,425 1538-1812 baptism, marriage and burial records; 1,470,200 1813-1925 baptism records; 546,515 1813-1941 banns and marriage records; and 325,233 1813-1998 burial records.
The record sets include digitised copies of the original parish registers from the Royal Berkshire Archives.
Parish records are a useful resource for tracing ancestors’ births, marriages and deaths, in addition to civil records.
Famous people from Berkshire can be discovered in the records. For example, they include the baptism of Arthur Percy Frank Chapman, son of Frank and Bertha Chapman on 29 September 1900 in the village of Hurst. Percy Chapman (pictured above on the right) became a cricket player who captained the England team from 1926 to 1931, including leading it to victory in the Ashes in 1926.
