WELSH RECORDS
‘Survival rates of parish registers are poor in comparison with England’
When giving talks or helping visitors at shows, I frequently encounter family historians who are much less confident about undertaking Welsh research than they are investigating their roots in England. Since 1536 under the Act of Union, England and Wales have shared both common law and the system of administration by county or shires, and parish registers in Wales were to be kept by law from 1538, as in England. In theory this commonality of systems should make researching your Welsh ancestors plain sailing. However, there are a number of crucial differences.
The first hurdle that all researchers encounter is simply that too many people share the same surnames, the top
