Family history website MyHeritage has added two major new sets of English and Welsh nonconformist records.
The new additions consist of 5.1 million 1660-1848 birth and baptism records and 1.4 million 1665-1837 burial records.
They include digitised copies of the original records, which are held at The National Archives. They are also already available on Findmypast, TheGenealogist and Ancestry.
Beginning in the 17th century, nonconformist Christian denominations began growing in England and Wales for those dissatisfied with the Church of England. The records cover a wide variety of nonconformist groups, including Baptists, Presbyterians, Unitarians, Moravians, Methodists and New Jerusalemites. They also include some Catholic records.
Before the introduction of civil registration of births, marriages and deaths in England and Wales in 1837, religious baptism and burial records are the only means to find someone’s birth and death. If your ancestor does not have a Church of England baptism or burial record, they may have been a nonconformist. These records are therefore vital for tracing nonconformist family history.
The records include details of a number of notable historic nonconformists. They include the record of the burial of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, which took place on 9 March 1791 in London.
They also include the baptism of Elizabeth Blackwell, the daughter of Samuel and Hannah Blackwell, which took place on 23 October 1825 in Bristol, with the record noting that she had born four years previously on 3 February 1821. The Blackwell family emigrated to the United States of America when Elizabeth was a child. Unusually, the Blackwell parents supported education for their daughters. Elizabeth became the first woman in America to earn a medical degree, founding the New York Infirmary for Women and Children and helping to organise nurses during the Civil War. She also subsequently founded the London School of Medicine for Women in 1874.
