3,472 burials at Gateshead Fell St. John from the beginning of its register in Nov 1825 to June 1864.

This parish was created out of Gateshead St. Mary. Residences mentioned include Gateshead, Gateshead Fell, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Ayton or Eighton Banks, Beacon Lough, Bensham, Bigges Main, Bill Quay, Birtley, Blue Quarries, Byker, Carr Hill, Chow Dean, Church Quarries, Deckham Place, Derwent Crook, Durham City, Felling, Galloping Green, Heworth, High Fell, Hill Top, Jarrow, Johnson’s Houses, Kell’s Field/Lane/Place, Kent’s Buildings, Low Fell, Lamesley, Mount Pleasant, Pelaw Main, Saltwell Vale, Sheriff Hill, South Shields, Union Place, Whickham, Windy Nook, and Wrekenton.

In addition to the local families, there were three lunatic asylums using this burying ground. The “lunatics” came from all over County Durham, Northumberland, Yorkshire, and even further away, so you may find “lost” relatives who disappeared from far-away places. Here are several examples:

• 24 Nov 1825 Mary Earl, of Hull, age: 36, died at Mr Ortons Lunatic Asylum
• 30 May 1833 George Herron, of Stamfordham, age: 40, died at Mr Gowlands Lunatic Asylum
• 13 Sep 1834 Richard Woolner, of Great Yarmouth, age: 43, died Mr Kent’s Lunatic Asylum

The Gateshead Fell Lunatic Asylum was operated by Mr. Samuel Kent and his family. In the 1841 census it had 81 inmates and a staff of 6 in addition to Mr Kent and his wife. The Jacob Gowland family ran the lunatic asylum at Wrekenton, which in 1841 housed 32 inmates. A third asylum, Bensham Lunatic Hospital, housed 63 inmates in 1841.

These burials were transcribed from the Bishop’s Transcripts, with many entries cross-checked against the original burial register microfilm and (after 1837) the GRO death index.

1,118 marriages at Stockton St. Thomas 1762-1797. We now have a complete run of marriages here from 1762 to 1837, and we will keep working our way backwards in this parish.

2,101 baptisms at Brancepeth St. Brandon from Aug 1599 to the end of 1644. These records named the child’s godparents from Oct 1627 to Mar 1639, and gave the child’s birthdate from mid-1629 to Mar 1639, then listed both birthdates and godparents again from Jul 1642 to Sep 1644.

Brancepeth is one of County Durham’s ancient parishes. Residences mentioned in this time period include Bigging, Billy Row, Boggle Hole, Brancepeth, Brandon, Burninghall, Burnt Gill, Cockside House, Crook, Dicken House, East Brandon, Halliwell, Hare Holme, Helmington Row, Hill House, Ivesley, Langley, Littleburn, Little White, Morley, Mown Meadows, Oakenshaw, Page Bank, Primrose Side, Pugle House, Skutes House, Sleetburn, Stanley, Stob House, Stockley, Tudhoe, Unthank, Waterhouse, West Brandon, Wheat Bottom, Willington, and Wooley.

Anyone with Tudhoe roots or any interest in the area history should visit Jeremy Hutson’s Tudhoe website.

6,918 burials in Bishopwearmouth Cemetery 1882 – 1885

Like earlier records from Bishopwearmouth Cemetery, these burial records usually provide the names of spouses, parents of deceased children, addresses, ages, and occupations. For example:

• 20 Nov 1875 John George Wanless, of 33 Lawrence Street, age: 10, son of George Wanless (Commercial Traveller)

This block includes the burials following the horrifying and tragic Victoria Hall Disaster of June 16, 1883 in which 183 children were crushed to death as they pressed against a door to receive treats. We have already seen that 31 of these children were buried at Mere Knolls Cemetery and 1 at the graveyard of Southwick parish church. Now we find that 116 were interred at Bishopwearmouth Cemetery – 48 on June 19th, 64 on the 20th. and 4 on June 21st. This still leaves 35 children unaccounted for and we would expect to find all of these when we cover the last large burial ground of Greater Sunderland – Sunderland Cemetery at Stockton Road, Grangetown.

More articles about the Victoria Hall Disaster of 1883 can be found at:

• List of victims (provided by GenUKI)
• Personal remembrances (Victoria County History project)
• Wearside Online
• Wikipedia

By popular customer demand, we have made the following changes to the Search function:

• added the ability to specify a spouse’s first name during a marriage search, in combination with First Name, Last Name, or both. This should help narrow down the list of results for people searching common names. For example, you can now search for:
  • Alice Smith who married a George
  • George Wanless who married an Alice
  • any George to any Alice (this returns many results, so can be slow, but is useful if you have unusual first names and a hard-to-read surname)
  • any groom surname with any bride first name, or any bride surname with any groom first name
  • The new Spouse field is at the bottom of the Parish Record Options section of the Search form. This field is ignored during searches of all other records – it is only applied to Marriages and Marriage Bonds.
• under Display Options on the Search form, you can now sort your results by First Name, Birth Year, or Event Year. Previously, the second choice was “Year of Birth/Event”, which produced a confusing mixture of results, with some sorted by event year and some by birth year. Now, if you sort by Birth Year, your results are truly sorted by birth year if it is contained in the record and by Event Year only if it is not. Likewise, sorting by Event Year gives you the events in proper year order, no matter when the people were born.
• added Cemetery Records and Marriage Bonds as options to the Search In drop-down list. This allows you to search either the Cemetery Records or Marriage Bonds separately, without seeing results from the church burial register or marriage register. Searching in Burials will still include both burial register and cemetery records in the results, and searching in Marriages will include both marriage register entries and marriage bonds in the results, all marked appropriately so you can tell the difference.
• added Guisborough to the District list on the Search form so you can now limit your search to records in the Guisborough district
• rearranged the Search form so that Parish Record options come before Census Options, as more people seem to be using the parish record searches. Also rearranged the order of fields within the Parish Record options.

As usual, please let me know if I broke anything by adding the new code, or let me know if you like it or if it needs to be improved somehow.

Replaced the burial index for Wolsingham St. Mary & St. Stephen 1771-1851 with full details so those 3,167 burials are now immediately available.

533 baptisms at South Shields St. Hilda’s in 1821

3,808 burials at Sunderland Holy Trinity 1813-1821

155 baptisms from Dec 1867 to May 1886 at the Methodist New Connexion chapel at Houghall. This chapel primarily served Houghall Colliery plus some residents of Shincliffe and Durham city. Example:

• 6 Jun 1880 John James Turnbull, of Houghall, child of Robert Turnbull & Elenor, age 6 weeks 3 days

195 baptisms of dissenters between 1751 and 1782. This list was kept by Rev. Joseph Wilkinson and later Rev. G. Walker, of the Claypath Chapel in Durham City. These dissenters were probably Presbyterians and/or Congregationalists. Most resided in the City but some lived elsewhere, including Bishop Auckland, Brancepeth, Chester-le-Street, Cullercoates, Darlington, Fatfield, Hetton-le-Hole, Monkwearmouth, North Shields, Rainton, Stockton, Sunderland, and Tynemouth. There are no baptisms listed 1762 – Mar 1767 or Sep 1778 – May 1782.