Place:Blaxton, West Riding of Yorkshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia Blaxton is a village and civil parish which, since 1974, has been located in the Metropolitan Borough of Doncaster of South Yorkshire, England. It is located on the county border with Lincolnshire and lies to the north of Finningley, on the A614 road. It had a population of 1,162 at the UK census of 2011. Prior to 1974 Blaxton was situated in the West Riding of Yorkshire, one of the three divisions of the county of York or Yorkshire.

Blaxton was part of the soke of Hexthorpe, later known as the Soke of Doncaster. The soke was a unit of local government with its own court and Blaxton effectively remained part of the soke until 1835, when the magistrates of Doncaster ceased to exercise their jurisdiction over the village.

From the earliest times, Blaxton lay in the ecclesiastical parish of Finningley in Nottinghamshire although Blaxton was part of the West Riding.

Blaxton has been through its history a small rural community. In 1811, the first time its population was counted separately, it had 132 residents. There were 146 of them by the mid century and 149 by 1901. These figures, however, disguise a picture of growth and then decline, in common with many agricultural communities in the course of the nineteenth century.

Research Tips

• GENUKI on Blaxton. The GENUKI page gives numerous references to local bodies providing genealogical assistance.
• The FamilySearch wiki on the ecclesiastical parish of Finningley in Nottinghamshire provides a list of useful resources for the local area.
• A Vision of Britain through Time on Blaxton.
• A Vision of Britain through Time also provides links to three maps for what is now South Yorkshire, produced by the United Kingdom Ordnance Survey, illustrating the boundaries between the civil parishes and the rural districts at various dates. These maps all blow up to a scale that will illustrate small villages and large farms or estates.

• Ordnance Survey West Riding 1888. The "Sanitary Districts (which preceded the rural districts) for the whole of the West Riding.
• Ordnance Survey West Riding South 1900. The rural and urban districts, not long after their introduction. (the southern part of Bradford, the southern part of Leeds, the southern part of Tadcaster Rural District, the southern part of Selby, Goole Rural District, and all the divisions of Halifax, Huddersfield, Wakefield, Doncaster, Barnsley, Rotherham and Sheffield)
• Ordnance Survey West Riding 1944. The urban and rural districts of the whole of the West Riding after the revisions of 1935.