Over one million parish records from Teesside in north-east England are now available to search online.
Family history website Ancestry has added three new collections: 1538-1812 baptisms, marriages and burials (169,497 records), 1813-1923 baptisms (670,814 records) and 1754-1939 banns and marriages (295,547 records).
The record sets can be searched by name and include digital scans of the original records, revealing many valuable details for family history research.
The record sets cover places including Hartlepool, Stockton-on-Tees, Middlesbrough, and Redcar & Cleveland.
The records are useful for tracing the lives of famous people from the area. For example, the 1813-1923 baptism records include the baptism of Fred Appleyard on 28 March 1875 at St Paul’s Church, Middlesbrough. The record says that Fred was born on 9 September 1874 and his parents’ names were Isaac and Elizabeth. The family lived at 7 Hill Terrace and his father worked as an accountant. Fred Appleyard went on to become a noted painter.
