Place:Morton (near Gainsborough), Lincolnshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Morton (near Gainsborough) is a village and civil parish in the West Lindsey District of Lincolnshire, England. It is situated 1 mile (1.6 km) north from the town of Gainsborough, to which it is conjoined, and on the River Trent.

Morton is listed in the 1086 Domesday Book as "Mortune", with four households. It was a township of Gainsborough parish until 1846, when the first church, dedicated to St. Paul, was opened in the village. The church then became a chapelry, until 1866, when Morton was created a civil parish.

The Grade II* listed church is dedicated to St. Paul. The current building dates from 1890–91 and was built to the designs of J. T. Micklethwaite and Somers Clarke, incorporating the tower of the church consecrated in 1846, which appears to have been re-faced. The width of the 1840s church decided the width of the nave of the current church. An 1890-91 building campaign was largely financed by the then Premier Baronet, Sir Hickman Becket Bacon, at a cost of £11,000. The church includes a chapel to Saint Hugh off the south aisle. Of note is the chancel carpet designed by William Morris (1834-1896) and stained glass windows by Burne-Jones (1833-1898), executed by Morris & Co.

The Manor House is a red-brick Grade II listed building dating from the mid-18th century with later alterations and additions.

Research Tips

Lincolnshire is very low-lying and land had to be drained for agriculture to be successful. The larger drainage channels, many of which are parallel to each other, became boundaries between parishes. Many parishes are long and thin for this reason.

There is much fenland in Lincolnshire, particularly in the Boston and Horncastle areas. Fenlands tended to be extraparochial before the mid 1850s, and although many sections were identified with names and given the title "civil parish", little information has been found about them. Many appear to be abolished in 1906, but the parish which adopts them is not given in A Vision of Britain through Time. Note the WR category Lincolnshire Fenland Settlements which is an attempt to organize them into one list.

From 1889 until 1974 Lincolnshire was divided into three administrative counties: Parts of Holland, Parts of Kesteven and Parts of Lindsey. These formal names do not fit with modern grammatical usage, but that is what they were, nonetheless. In 1974 the northern section of Lindsey, along with the East Riding of Yorkshire, became the short-lived county of Humberside. In 1996 Humberside was abolished and the area previously in Lincolnshire was made into the two "unitary authorities" of North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire. The remainder of Lincolnshire was divided into "non-metropolitan districts" or "district municipalities" in 1974. Towns, villages and parishes are all listed under Lincolnshire, but the present-day districts are also given so that places in this large county can more easily be located and linked to their wider neighbourhoods. See the WR placepage Lincolnshire, England and the smaller divisions for further explanation.

• Maps provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time show all the parishes and many villages and hamlets. (Small local reorganization of parishes took place in the 1930s led to differences between the latter two maps.):

• Lincolnshire Ordnance Survey Map of 1888 with Poor Law Union divisions
• Lincolnshire Ordnance Survey Map of 1900 with early Rural District divisions
• Lincolnshire Ordnance Survey Map, revised 1937 with later Rural District divisions

• FindMyPast now has a large collection of Lincolnshire baptisms, banns, marriages and burials now available to search by name, year, place and parent's names. This is a pay website. (blog dated 16 Sep 2016)
• GENUKI's page on Lincolnshire's Archive Service gives addresses, phone numbers, webpages for all archive offices, museums and libraries in Lincolnshire which may store old records and also presents a list entitled "Hints for the new researcher" which may include details of which you are not aware. These suggestions are becoming more and more outdated, but there's no telling what may be expected in a small library.
• GENUKI also has pages of information on individual parishes, particularly ecclesiastical parishes. The author may just come up with morsels not supplied in other internet-available sources.
• Deceased Online now has records for 11 cemeteries and two crematoria in Lincolnshire. This includes Grimsby's Scartho Road cemetery, Scartho Road crematorium, and Cleethorpes cemetery, council records for the City of Lincoln and Gainsborough, and older church records from The National Archives for St Michael's in Stamford, and St Mark's in Lincoln, dating back to 1707. This is a pay website.