Family history website Ancestry has added a major new set of almost nine million Suffolk parish records.
The website added four record sets from the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich: 4,576,549 1538-1812 baptism, marriage and burial records; 2,213,998 1813-1924 baptism records; 1,532,634 1754-1949 marriage records; and 514,948 1813-1999 burial records.
The records were digitised from collections held at The Hold archive facility in Ipswich, which opened in 2021. Ancestry is a subscription-based website, but the records will be free to view on computers at The Hold.
Councillor Philip Faircloth-Mutton, Suffolk County Council’s cabinet member for environment, communities and equality, said: “This project is a fantastic step forward in making Suffolk’s rich history more accessible. Whether you're overseas, have mobility challenges, or simply prefer to research from home, these records are now just a click away. By digitising these documents, we’re not only preserving them for future generations but also helping people reconnect with their heritage. I hope this sparks even more interest in the stories held by Suffolk Archives.”
Before the introduction of civil registration in 1837, parish records are the main means for finding your ancestors’ births, marriages and deaths, with baptism and burial records showing the beginning and end of their lives.
As well as showing the lives of millions of ordinary residents of Suffolk, the records include details of a number of famous people.
The 1776 baptisms for East Bergholt record that “John son of Golding & Anne Constable” was born on 11 June.
John Constable went on to become one of England’s most famous painters, depicting Suffolk’s beautiful landscape with artworks such as The Hay Wain [pictured above].
There is also an earlier baptism record for ‘Samuel Appliton’ at Little Waldingfield in 1624. Samuel Appleton emigrated to the British colony in Massachussetts with his parents as a child and became a military commander in the 1675-78 conflict against indigenous peoples known as King Philip’s War.
The burial records include the burial of Thomas Clarkson on 2 October 1846 at Hayford, and record that he died aged 87.
Clarkson was a founder of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade and a leading campaigner for the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire.
Simon Pearce, family history expert at Ancestry, said: “Collections such as this important set of records from Suffolk will help us discover more information about the key events in our ancestors' lives, and help to fill in the gaps in many family trees with connections to Suffolk. The collection is of huge importance to both the community in Suffolk and people with connections back to this county scattered all over the UK and the globe.”
