Place:Hereford, Herefordshire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Hereford is a cathedral city, civil parish and the county town of Herefordshire, England. It lies on the River Wye, approximately east of the border with Wales, south-west of Worcester and north-west of Gloucester. With a population of 60,800, it is by far the largest settlement in Herefordshire.

An early town charter from 1189, granted by Richard I of England, describes it as "Hereford in Wales". Hereford has been recognised as a city since time immemorial, with the status being reconfirmed as recently as October 2000.

It is now known chiefly as a trading centre for a wider agricultural and rural area. Products from Hereford include cider, beer, leather goods, nickel alloys, poultry, chemicals and sausage rolls, as well as the famous Hereford breed of cattle.

The original town of Hereford included the ecclesiastical parishes of Hereford All Saints, Hereford St. John the Baptist, Hereford St. Martin, Hereford St. Nicholas, Hereford St. Owen, and Hereford St. Peter. All of these churches produced separate parochial registers for baptisms, marriages and burials. All but Hereford St. Nicholas were also civil parishes between 1837 and 1932, recording births and deaths and the decennial censuses. The City of Hereford took over these duties in 1932. The churches listed above were in addition to Hereford Cathedral, dedicated to two other patron saints, namely Saint Mary the Virgin and Saint Ethelbert the King.

The municipal borough of Hereford was created in 1835 and abolished in 1974 when Herefordshire became part of the new administrative county of Hereford and Worcester. At this time Herefordshire was divided into five municipal districts, one of which was Hereford Borough which covered a wider area than the former municipal borough. Hereford and Worcester was wound up in 1998 and Herefordshire came back into being as a unitary authority, (a single tier of government for the whole county).

A Vision of Britain through Time lists the following parishes which were absorbed into Hereford while it was a municipal borough: Breinton (1884), Bullingham, Upper Bullingham (1866), The Vineyard (1858), Holmer and Shelwick (1866), Holmer Within (1884), Huntington (near Hereford), and Tupsley (1866). The City of Hereford took over registrar's duties for these places in 1932.

History

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Hereford.

Research Tips

• Herefordshire Archive and Records Centre, Fir Tree Lane, Rotherwas, Hereford HR2 6LA is where paper and microfilm copies of all records for Herefordshire are stored. The Archives Centre has a website where the index to the archives (and also the wills catalog) can be searched. One item in the catalog is List of all Herefordshire parish register and bishops transcripts holdings which is a PDF file with information provided in an old version of Excel.

Online sources which may also be helpful:

• GENUKI gives pointers to other archive sources as well as providing some details on each parish in the county. The emphasis here is on ecclesiastical parishes (useful before 1837)
• A listing of all the Registration Districts in England and Wales since their introduction in 1837 and tables of the parishes that were part of each district and the time period covered with detailed notes on changes of parish name, mergers, etc. Do respect the copyright on this material.
• The FamilySearch Wiki for Herefordshire provides a similar but not identical series of webpages to that provided by GENUKI
• A Vision of Britain through Time has a group of pages of statistical facts for almost every parish in the county
• Unfortunately, only one volume on Herefordshire has been published in the Victoria County History series. British History Online have produced a series of Ordnance Survey first edition maps for the county which may be helpful for mid-nineteenth century inquiries
• Ancestry.co.uk lists its collections of Herefordshire genealogical material.
• FindMyPast collections of historical records can be searched for Herefordshire. They have collections of parish records for the pre-1837 period.