In a message dated 14/08/2007 22:00:31 GMT Daylight Time, [email protected] writes: Hi Geoff I was just about to post on this but note your mention of the PRs starting in 1609 >From Genuki on Stanhope is :- Church Records "The register dates from 1595." [From History, Topography and Directory of Durham, Whellan, London, 1894] The Parish Registers for the period 1609-1974 are deposited at Durham County Record Office, County Hall, Durham, DH1 5UL (EP/St). And from Phillimores :- Under copies of regs not at Soc Gen 1595 - 1812 (which somewhat contradicts the item under Copies of Registers at the Soc Gen 1607 - 1837) Nivard: My information was taken from the 2nd edition of the National Index of Parish Registers, Vol XI Pt 1 (1984), Durham and Northumberland, published by the Society of Genealogists (ISBN 0 901878 66 9). The first edition (1979) had been compiled by Charles Neat but he died before the second edition was called for, so that was compiled by the late Don Mason - with a little help from yours truly. Under Stanhope it indicates that the original records from 1609 are in Durham County Record Office. To summarise the other details, the marriages 1613-1812 were published by the Durham and Northumberland Parish Register Society. Indexes (ie indexed transcripts) are in Newcastle Central Library (the H M Wood transcripts) and microfilm copies of those are in Salt Lake City. The marriages are in Boyd's Marriage Index and the Banns are in Boyd's "Miscellaneous" Volume. Baptisms from 1609 are on the IGI. Some extracts are in Gateshead Public Library. The BTs run from 1762-1833, with gaps. Notes to the Stanhope entry refer to "Weardle St John" (ie St John's Chapel), some of the entries from which are included as separate lists in some of the Stanhope volumes, and to Heathery Cleugh which, like St John's Chapel, became a parish of its own, formed out of Stanhope parish. A more telling note is probably "Many gaps in CMB"! That is a summary! The full entry, which contains too many abbreviations for it to be given here verbatim, also includes the outside dates in each case - but the earliest date mentioned is 1609. As perhaps you know if you have looked at the earliest entries in many registers, it is sometimes obvious that a register began to be kept on a regular basis in, say, 1609, but a few earlier entries may have been added retrospectively, perhaps on the fly-leaf, at a later date. In such cases the "few" might be several dozen or it may be only one. If Stanhope registers include one such entry, dating from 1595, and then no more until 1609, it would hardly be fair to say they began in 1595 when, as a regularly kept, continuous and chronological register, it began in 1609. That is only an example of the sort of thing that might have happened - I am not saying that was the case in Stanhope, though I suspect it might have been something very similar. Geoff Nicholson