Place:Thornaby on Tees, North Riding of Yorkshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

the following text is a condensation of an article in Wikipedia

Thornaby is said to have come into existence about 800 AD when the land was given by Halfdene (Halfdan Ragnarsson), King of the Danes, to Thormod, one of his noblemen, hence "Thormods-by" or Thormod's farmstead. Although the -by suffix originally meant a farmstead, many of these grew into villages, taking the -by suffix with them in their names.

Town formation

Over the centuries there have been a number of different spellings of the name Thornaby including Turmozbi, Tormozbi, Tormozbia and Thurmozbi. The form Thornaby first appears in 1665 and refers to old Thornaby village near the River Tees.

In 1825, Thornaby, centred around St Peter's Church and the old village green was gradually overshadowed by the burgeoning newly-named town of South Stockton two miles away. Like Thornaby, South Stockton was on the Yorkshire side of the river Tees and opposite Stockton on Tees in County Durham. It was not until the local government act of 1863 that the district of South Stockton officially came into being. In 1825 South Stockton became the site of William Smith's pottery and the area quickly grew with the establishment of shipbuilding and engineering. Stockton-on-Tees Council made two attempts to take over the local board of South Stockton, first in 1869 and again in 1883, but without success. On 6 October 1892 South Stockton and the original Thornaby merged into one to form the "Municipal Borough of Thornaby on Tees".

Civic history

Thornaby lies within the historic county boundaries of the North Riding of Yorkshire, and was made a municipal borough in 1892. Prior to that it was a chapelry in the ecclesiastical Stainton in Cleveland in the Langbaurgh West Wapentake.

In 1968 it was amalgamated with other boroughs including Middlesbrough and Stockton on Tees to form the county borough of Teesside. In 1974 the area was reorganized and Thornaby became part of the borough of Stockton on Tees in the new non-metropolitan county of Cleveland. Within the unitary authority of Stockton on Tees, in 1995, Thornaby Town Council was created.

Cleveland County was short-lived. It was abolished in 1996 and was replaced with the single tier unitary authorities of Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland, Stockton on Tees and Hartlepool. The former areas of Cleveland County were returned to their original counties for ceremonial purposes with Stockton on Tees becoming the only local authority in the country to be split between two counties, Durham to the north of the river and Yorkshire to the south.

Research Tips

• For a map of the parishes in the local area, see this page.
• Original historical documents relating to the North Riding of Yorkshire and North Yorkshire are held at the North Yorkshire County Record Office, Malpas Road, Northallerton, North Yorkshire DL7 8TB
• Family history societies covering the area include the Ryedale Family History Group, the Family History Section of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society (based in the City of York), and the Cleveland, North Yorkshire & South Durham Family History Society (for the Cleveland and Teesside area and the western part of North Yorkshire, commonly known as the "Yorkshire Downs"). A more complete list may be found under the Federation of Family History Societies.
• A History of the County of Yorkshire from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1914 and 1923 (Volume 1: the western part of the North Riding including Richmond and Volume 2: the eastern part of the North Riding including Scarborough and Whitby). A History of the County of York: the City of York is also helpful for the many North Riding parishes that were absorbed into the city during the 19th and 20th centuries.

This is by far the most complete history of the parishes of the North Riding to be found online. The volumes are divided into sections by wapentake (early divisions of the county) and the parishes within each wapentake follow in alphabetical order. The links above open to the indexes covering all the wapentakes in the volume.

• GENUKI has a page on all three ridings of Yorkshire and pages for each of the ancient or ecclesiastical parishes in the county. Under each ancient parish there is a list of the settlements (townships and chapelries) within it and brief description of each. Many of these secondary settlements became civil parishes during the latter half of the 19th century.

These notes are based on a gazetteer dated 1835 and there may have been a number of alterations to the parish setup since then. However, it is worthwhile information for the pre civil registration era. GENUKI provides references to other organizations who hold genealogical information for the local area. There is no guarantee that the website has been kept up to date and the submitter is very firm about his copyright, but this should not stop anyone from reading the material.

• The FamilyTree Wiki has a series of pages similar to those provided by GENUKI which may have been prepared at a later date. The wiki has a link to English Jurisdictions 1851 which gives the registration district and wapentake for each parish, together with statistics from the 1851 census for the area.
• A Vision of Britain through Time, Yorkshire North Riding, section "Units and Statistics" leads to analyses of population and organization of the county from about 1800 through 1974. There are pages available for all civil parishes, municipal boroughs and other administrative divisions which also include historical population and area statistics. Descriptions provided are usually based on a gazetteer of 1870-72.
• Map of the North Riding divisions in 1888 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time
• Map of North Riding divisions in 1944 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time
• Another provider of maps is the National Library of Scotland. In this index the Scottish provision precedes the English one, but the choice of maps for England is still quite vast.
• Yorkshire has a large number of family history and genealogical societies. A list of the societies will be found on the Yorkshire, England page.
• In March 2018 Ancestry announced that its file entitled "Yorkshire, England: Church of England Parish Records, 1538-1873" has been expanded to include another 94 parishes (across the three ridings) and expected it to be expanded further during the year. The entries are taken from previously printed parish registers.
• The chapter of the Victoria County History, published 1923, dealing with Stainton in Cleveland parish.