Chowbent Chapel, Atherton in the County of -- Lancashire --

Baptisms at Chowbent Protestant Dissenting Chapel
Introductory Notes

The first four register of baptisms at Chowbent Chapel cover the following periods:

1st Register Book October 1758 to June 1786
2nd Register Book July 1786 to December 1804
3rd Register Book January 1805 to February 1837
4th Register Book February 1837 to September 1890

In 1837, a Royal Commission was set up to survey the State, Custody and Authenticity of Non-parochial Registers. A Commission questionnaire was circularised to non-conformist chapels, among them the Protestant Dissenting Chapel at Chowbent (known colloquially at the time as the New Bent Chapel, to distinguish it from its predecessor, the Old Bent Chapel. It is now the Chowbent Unitarian Chapel). In his reply the Rev. Thomas Walker Horsefield stated that there were three existing register books, and that the congregation had agreed, with great reluctance, to send the books to London to be kept in the custody of the newly established General Register Office.

Before the books were posted to London, their contents were transcribed into a 4th Register Book. New baptisms were then added continuously till May 1888, when the book was full. The 4th Register was continued briefly (May 1888-September 1890), by writing a further 59 baptisms into empty pages of the burials register, which was no longer required after the chapel grave yard finally closed in 1888. A new register was opened when the Revd. J.J. Wright commenced his ministry in 1891: baptisms in that register are not included in this online database.

I refer to the transcriptions of the first three registers in the 4th Register Book, as the Rewritten Register. The first three registers are held by the Public Record Office (now National Archives PRO) at Kew, and were filmed by the LDS in 1968 (Film 560879).

The edges of many pages of the 1st Register, and to a lesser extent the 3rd Register, were somewhat battered by the time they were filmed, and some names and dates were no longer legible. The books were in much better condition when transcribed in 1837, so I have used the Rewritten Register as the primary source for the database on this site. To guard against transcriptions errors in the Rewritten Register, the information in the electronic database has been double-checked against the microfilmed originals, looking especially for errors in dates. Spelling and abbreviations are those of the Rewritten Register. If there were substantive differences in names and dates, the original registers have taken precedence over the Rewritten Register, and omissions in the latter have been corrected.

The page numbers recorded in this database are from the 4th Register Book (both Rewritten Register and new post-1837 entries): they do not relate to the pages in the original three registers. Individual entries are numbered only the 2nd Register Book.

First names, particularly of parents, were usually abbreviated, with the last letter of the name in superscript above a dot. In this database, the dot comes after the last letter of the name. It should be obvious what the full name is, but be warned – Josh. is the abbreviation of Joseph, and does not stand for Joshua or similar, less-common names. In fact, names which were not common in Chowbent are always spelt in full.

The ministers of Chowbent Chapel did not consistently record their names as officiating at baptisms. Presumably it was assumed that a baptism registered during their ministry was performed by themselves unless otherwise noted. B.R. Davis always recorded his name with the note “by me” at the top of the When Registered column, but it was not till the ministry of James Kirk Pike in 1885 that a column for the name of the officiating minister was put in the register. The Chowbent Chapel ministers during the period of the four register books were as follows:

The LDS have entered names from the first three register books (through February 1837) into their International Genealogical Index. I have not looked specifically for errors and omissions in the IGI, and have not noted those I found while preparing this database, but they do exist. First names missing from the IGI in damaged parts of the registers are all given here.

I thank the Rev. Peter Hughes, former Minister of Chowbent Unitarian Chapel, for the loan of a copy of the 4th Register Book of Baptisms, and the Burials Book, which were the main sources for this database.

Sample images from the Registers are presented below:-

Part of the first page of the 1st Register Book of baptisms at Chowbent Chapel

The first six entries in the 2nd Register Book of baptisms at Chowbent Chapel

The top half of the first page of the 3rd Register Book of baptisms at Chowbent Chapel

The title page of the 4th Register Book of baptisms at Chowbent Chapel

Peter Wood
April 2005