Breconshire
Local & Family
History Society

 

Cymdeithas Hanes
Lleol & Theuluoedd
Brycheiniog

Parish Pages - Brecon, St John

Watergate Baptist Chapel, Brecon: Births and Baptisms 1817-1837

Example page from registerIntroduction to the records
The BLFHS Transcription Group recorded the data in the register which began in 1817 and ended when it was surrendered to the General Record Office in 1837 as civil registration began.
As the Baptist denomination does not practise the baptism of infants, the records are of the date of a child's birth and their registration as a member of the community. Each page of the register is headed Bontestyll and Watergate Chapel (see example, right) and there are two records of burials that had taken place in the burial ground of Pontestyll Chapel near Llanspyddid. There is no detail of where the registration of the younger members took place.

For more detail on the chapels see PDF document at:
http://www.capeli.org.uk/uploads/local_18_brecon.pdf

Our Transcriptions
The register has been transcribed as seen, except that:

  • Surnames are capitalised to aid searching
  • Dates have been standardised to a simple form and are always at the beginning of an entry
  • Abbreviated names have always been expanded e.g.Tho[mas]

Spelling mistakes and variants of place-names e.g. Llanspithyd, have been retained.

Spreadsheets

  • In recording the registration of a child with unmarried parents the surnames of both parents are given in the child’s surname column
  • A Notes column has been added to the spreadsheet for extra information provided by the minister, or to give an explanation for the user
  • The penultimate column of the spreadsheet gives the page number of the register
  • The final spreadsheet column (shaded pink) gives the identification number of the scanned image from which our transcribers worked.

Transcribers' Marks

  • Anything enclosed in square brackets has been added by a transcriber
  • [n/e] shows that there was no entry for that column of the spreadsheet 

View the Transcriptions

The transcriptions for the Chapel can be viewed with the other records for the parish of Brecon St John.  Click here to access them.