The Parish Registers of Dunstable Bedfordshire 1558–1812 - Digital Download or CD-ROM

Product Description

Journey back more than 250 years into one of England's most historic market towns. This volume reproduces, as high-quality scanned images, the printed transcription of the ancient parish registers of Dunstable's Priory Church of St Peter — transcribed from the earliest surviving year, 1558, right through to 1812, the dawn of the modern civil registration era.

Between those dates, Dunstable grew from an ancient town on the Roman road of Watling Street into a busy coaching stop and the heart of Bedfordshire's straw plaiting country. If your family tree runs through Dunstable, Luton, Houghton Regis or the border parishes of old Dunstable, these pages may hold the very entries that break down your brick walls.

Because the volume is a transcription, the hardest genealogical work is already done — no wrestling with faded ink, secretary hand or Latin. And because it is supplied as scanned page images, you can see every entry exactly as the original editor printed it.

What's Inside – Section by Section

Baptisms 1558–1812 Generation after generation of Dunstable families, from the first Elizabethan entries to the Rose's Act registers of 1812. Find children's names alongside fathers (and often mothers), with occupations and abodes recorded as the years progress — plaiters, milliners, innkeepers, wheelwrights, butchers and brewers of Watling Street.

Marriages 1558–1812 Early entries are brief but precious; after Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act (1754) the registers become a genealogist's goldmine — signatures or marks, occupations, parishes of residence and witnesses, perfect for confirming you've found the right couple and not a namesake.

Burials 1558–1812 Three centuries of the town's dead — ages, family relationships, occupations, years of plague and fever, pauper burials, and the nonconformist families who shaped Bedfordshire's dissenting tradition.

Editor's Introduction & Notes Historical context, dating notes and, where included, indexes of names — invaluable aids for locating your ancestors across three centuries of entries.

A Town Steeped in History, Folklore & Legend

Your ancestors lived in one of the most storied towns in England:

• Henry VIII & Catherine of Aragon – In May 1533 a court sitting in Dunstable Priory declared the King's marriage null and void. The registers begin a generation later, in the town that lit the touchpaper of the English Reformation.
• The Eleanor Cross – In 1290 the funeral procession of Queen Eleanor of Castile rested at Dunstable, and one of the twelve great Eleanor crosses rose here on Watling Street.
• The Dunstable Swan Jewel – A stunning gold and enamel swan brooch of the 14th century, found by the Priory and now one of the British Museum's treasures. The swan remains the town's emblem to this day.
• Royal tournaments – The medieval Annales de Dunstaplia, written by the Priory's own monks, record glittering tournaments held in the town in the age of Edward I.
• John Bunyan – In 1660 the tinker-preacher was arrested while preaching at Samsell, just south of Dunstable — the arrest that led to his imprisonment and The Pilgrim's Progress. Nonconformist lines run deep in these registers.
• Gary Cooper – Hollywood's two-time Oscar-winning legend is said to trace his family to Dunstable before emigration to America. Could a Cooper entry here connect to a screen icon?
• Highwaymen of the Great North Road – Coaching-era Dunstable was stalked by pistol-toting rogues on Watling Street. Your ancestors may be the innkeepers, hostlers and farriers who serviced the traffic — or the constables who fought it.
• The Five Knolls – The ancient burial mounds on Dunstable Downs, said in local folklore to hold Dunstable's plague dead and the victims of the Downs gallows — and, as legend insists, still haunted on quiet nights.
• The Straw Plait Trade – The industry that dressed the nation's heads. Countless women and children of Dunstable plaited straw for the Luton hat trade, and their entries fill these pages.

Whether or not a famous name appears in your line, understanding the world your ancestors inhabited is half the joy of family history.

Delivery & Features

Choose your format:

• Instant Digital Download – start researching within minutes
• CD – posted to your door, ideal for archiving or gifting

Searchable, translatable, and audible:

• OCR on the fly – modern PDF readers (Adobe Acrobat Reader, Edge, Chrome and more) now automatically recognise text on scanned pages, so you can search, copy, highlight and select entries with no extra software.
• Translation & Text-to-Speech – on desktop PCs, the Google Lens tools built into modern browsers can translate passages and read entries aloud — wonderfully helpful for tricky Latin phrases, old place names, or researching with tired eyes. (Translation and text-to-speech features are available on desktop PCs.)

Requirements: Any standard PDF reader. Desktop PC recommended for the full OCR, translation and read-aloud features.

Perfect For

Family historians • One-name studies • Bedfordshire & Hertfordshire local history • Descendants of Dunstable emigrants • Gifts for the genealogist in your life