Explore registers and records from the English county of Berkshire. Discover your ancestor in parish registers from Leckhamstead and St Mary, Reading.
Explore registers and records from the English county of Berkshire. Discover your ancestor in parish registers from Leckhamstead and St Mary, Reading.
This collection currently holds two titles:
Parish Registers of Leckhamstead, 1558-1812 – This title includes baptisms, marriages, and burials for Leckhamstead in north Berkshire. Entries will include names and event dates but may also include fathers’ names or additional details. For example, a baptism that took place in 1600 includes the following information: ‘Peter, s. of John Smith, was bapt., whose mother was taken in labour near ye Parish, being a stranger’. In addition to vital event entries, there are included notes pertaining to the parish. For instance, it is noted on ‘26 Geo., A.D. 1753, N.S.—On Thursday morning, Jan. 11, there was as great a flood as has been known for thirty-seven years last past, occasioned by the great wind and rains which happened the day before. The water came almost as far as the end of ye chancell, but went away providentially without doing any further damage’ (image number 7).
Parish Registers of St Mary, Reading, 1538-1812 – Volume one pertains to baptisms and includes a list of vicars with brief biographies. From the baptism register, you can learn individuals’ names and their baptism dates. Volume two, which begins on image number 315, covers marriages and burials and includes names and event dates. Names of both the bride and groom are included in the marriage register. The marriage entry may also include a note as to the couple’s statuses and means of marriage – by banns or by licence. Burial entries (which start on image number 403) occasionally include additional notes, such as an individual’s marital status or occupation. You may even learn that an individual was a prisoner at the time of their death.
The digital images in this collection are presented in PDF form. Searching through a PDF can be different from searching through other record sets.
The search feature uses direct search: it will only search for the exact words you write in the search field. For example, if you search for John Smith, the results will give you pages with John and Smith.
All search results will bring you to the page on which your search word has been found and not to an individual transcript. You can then read through the page to find your result.
To search for your ancestor by their name, write it as it would appear in the original record; for example, if your relative was known as Will, it is likely that the name used in official documents was William.
If you are unable to find your relative on your first search, you can try different name variations; for example, if your search for William Smith yields zero results, try searching for W Smith.
Page numbers correlate with the individual pages of the images rather than the page numbers printed in the publication. Therefore, page one pertains to the first page of a volume, which can be the front cover.