Lancashire Church Records

Lancashire church records are not all deposited at the Lancashire record office, but at a number of other depositories following local government reorganisation in 1974.

• Lancashire Record Office has the largest holdings and includes those for northern Lancashire. Finding Folk published by the record office holds all the details of the registers they hold.
• Manchester Central library holds the registers for south east Lancashire. Manchester & Lancashire FHS publish a book (frequently referred to as 'The Pink book') recording their holdings. A simplified version of this can be viewed online.
• Liverpool Record Office hold the registers for the Liverpool and Merseyside area.
• Cumbria Record Office (Barrow) and Cumbria Record Office (Kendal) cover Lancashire over the sands that has now become part of Cumbria. Cumbrian Ancestors, Notes for Genealogical Searchers is the book that they publish which includes details of their parish register holdings.

Details of Unitarian Records are provide by the Unitarian Societies.

Hugh Wallis has a comprehensive list of IGI batch numbers. Those for Lancashire are split alphabetically: A-K, L-O and P-Z.

Owen Manuscripts

John Owen was born in Bolton le Moors on 26th May 1815 and came to live in Manchester at the age of two. During his lifetime he recorded a large amount of information in 87 substantial 'notebooks' roughly covering the the topics of:

• Monumental incriptions
• Parish registers
• Genealogical memoranda
• Architecture and archaeology
• Miscellaneous historical notes

The bulk of the Owen MSS refers to southeast Lancashire and east Cheshire but he was quite extensve in his travels which included the Peak District, Shropshire, North Wales Yorkshire and the Isle of Man.

Manchester Archives and Local Studies, Manchester Central Library, hold copies of the manuscripts. The contents list published by the Manchester & Lancashire Family History Society is a good starting point for a dsecription of their contents.