Family History and Nonconformist Burials

Family History investigations of ancestor's lives are more than likely to bring us into contact with death or burial records in one form or another. What happens, however, if we find that our forebears were not C of E (the established church in England and Wales) and so they can't be found easily in the parish records?

From what I can see, in my recent research, not many Nonconformist chapel burial records seem to survive in Devon, England, where much of my family tree searches take place.

When people died in England, no matter whatever their denomination might have been, by law they were entitled to be interred within their parish churchyard. They weren't, however, allowed to hold the Church of England burial service next to the graveside. This would be fine if all the deceased's family were no longer C of E, but could be upsetting for family members who had not joined their relation in nonconformity and so would have wanted a service conducted by the local vicar.

I was intrigued to find out that people who held offices within the "establishment", for example local councillors as well as certain council officials, were not permitted to wear their robes of office or the mayoral chains etc. whilst attending the funeral of a nonconformist councillor. If they defied this rule then they may have been fined £100 and could have also been barred from public office for the rest of their lives!

Many nonconformists, however, did not wish to be interred inside Church of England held land. Quakers, especially, established their unique burial grounds. In these, the family historian will discover, plots defined by plain and uncomplicated stones that usually presented simply the initials belonging to the departed.

A number of chapels established their own burial grounds, this included Independents, Methodists as well as the Baptists. Furthermore, in several country places, burial grounds were opened for all those involved with nonconformity and would not specifically be confined to only one or perhaps some other particular religious faith. Around 1880 a welcome change, in the laws of England & Wales, granted for the family of a person, being laid to rest within a Church of England parish graveyard, to opt for a minister from their own religious beliefs to be able to preside over the burial service. This began the downfall in making use of separate nonconformist burial grounds, often less popular because of the fact that in some cases they were miles from the particular village or district from where the family resided. In 1853, immediately after the considerable overcrowding of graveyards along with burial grounds due in some measure to the number of cholera fatalities and so forth, Parliament handed down a further law closing a large number of churchyards as well as burial grounds to fresh internments. The result of the law saw many towns as well as bigger parishes setting up cemeteries, to look after the continued burial of the deceased.

To find earlier burial grounds nowadays isn't always that simple. In an ideal world you will be able to find someone who possesses the local knowledge and is willing to assist you in your research. I've had experience of this while I was researching my family in Cheltenham, England. The local history society, as well as an amateur historian from one of the bigger churches, were able to help lead me in the right direction to find my ancestor. The basic scarcity of registers, nevertheless, will most likely make it tough if you want to research for names.

There is a report that comes up in several sources of a peculiar example of nonconformist burial. I recall it here as a great example of practicality. Within the Arnos Vale cemetery, in Bristol, England, there was an Anglican gentleman, whose wife was a nonconformist. They wished to be laid to rest together after their deaths, but the challenge for the husband and wife was this. The nonconformist graves had to be located in a separate part of the cemetery from Church of England ones. The solution, that the gentleman found, was the applying of a little bit of lateral thinking by the gentleman when he examined the map of this particular cemetery. He went ahead and obtained a big family grave that straddled the boundary line of both sections of the cemetery! The resulting large plot contains man and spouse, with each one interred on their own side of the border line and yet each acknowledging their own particular faith.

Lastly, when researching nonconformist burials in your family history, do make sure that you take into account if the deceased was very poor and thus more likely to have been given a "pauper" grave. In this case the identify of the dead person wouldn't have been shown and usually only a numbered peg was entered to identify the grave.

I wish you luck in your family tree research

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