St Andrew's Street Baptist Church Parish Records

Baptist churches don't have one central register for their parish records.  Each church was set up by the local people, for the local people, so what records they kept and how they disposed of them was something for them to decide.  For this reason it's worth looking at Baptists if your ancestors seem to "appear from nowhere" or disappear.

I've a relative who was baptised and married, but I can't find the rest of her family at present.  Then I got a lead that a whole family by the name were in the baptist records for St Andrew's Street Baptist Church.  So I started looking into this.

When looking at online genealogy and family history websites you should remember that there are records that are not present - and, when appropriate, find those gaps and fill them.  Sometimes it's not worth your while to spend the time pursuing every detail, but sometimes you simply hit a brickwall and the only way to solve these appearances/disappearances is to look at other churches.  If one ancestor's a baptist, or other religion, then it's likely you'll suddenly discover whole families and generations that, before, simply didn't come up in your searches.

The St Andrew's Street Baptist Church still exists today and is one of a few Baptist churches in Cambridge.  Another is the Eden Baptist Church, on the corner of Fitzroy Street and Burleigh Street. There's also the Zion Baptist church on East Road, which opened in 1837.

St Andrew's Street Baptist Church is the one that is now on my radar - it's location is at 43 St Andrew's Street, Cambridge, CB2 3AR. And, luckily, they have transcribed and published their parish records in a book:

• English Baptist Records book 2: St Andrew’s Street Baptist Church Cambridge.  This covers the years 1720-1832.  ISBN numbers 0903166143 and  978-0903166140 .  This was published in 1991 by the Baptist Historical Society. It's available on Amazon.co.uk for about £11.

The book contains 196 pages of baptisms, marriages and deaths.

Which Parish is St Andrew's Baptist Church in?

When comparing baptist churches to the churches you usually get in parish records, St Andrew's Baptist Church is physically in the area defined as the parish of Holy Trinity, Cambridge.  The family I am looking for used Holy Trinity, so at some point it is quite reasonable that they could've changed churches and started with the baptists. When we refer to parishes, those are defined by the Church of England, so other denominations, churches and chapels will exist within those parish boundaries.

Burials at St Andrew's, Cambridge,  1818-1859

The National Archives holds a list of burials at St Andrew's Baptist Church, for the years 1818-1859.  Unfortunately at the time of writing they haven't digitized it, so it's not available for download.  You can view the files for free at the National Archives in London, or request a quote for them to digitise it or to print it and post it to you. I think I'll wait awhile, it's not a high priority for me. I also think that the families might not be the ones I'm after, but just a family with the same surname.

Image: Geograph