Find your ancestors in Shropshire Family History Society

The Shropshire Family History Society celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2019 and has about 1200 members from around the world. Membership being open to anyone interested in family history.

We normally hold monthly meetings in The Old Chapel Community Centre, Cross Houses, Near Shrewsbury. However, at present our meetings are being held using “Zoom”.This has enabled more distant and overseas members to take part. It is however difficult to “chat” easily between members owing to the constraints of the system.

Although there are more attendees, interaction is not so easy. These “Zoom” meetings are in the format of a specialist speaker with question and answer sessions following the talk using the “Zoom” Chat function.

The Society has an extensive collection of reference books available to members and holds copies of most of the printed parish registers of Shropshire. These are held at Cross Houses and usually available via our Librarian.

We sell books giving information about family history research sources and topographical information about Shropshire. We also have various CD’s and MI’s all of which can be ordered via the Website.

In common with most Societies we publish a quarterly journal in March, June, September and December. a free copy being posted to all members. We also take part in the mutual exchange scheme with other Family History Societies so that our members are able to read, and borrow until the next normal meeting, the journals of most other UK. societies and several from overseas.

The Society recently finished the mammoth task of transcribing all the Burials in the Counties 256 Parish’s from PR’s with BT’s used to fill in the gaps and cross check. This project took about 22 years and many people’s efforts. It holds over 632,000 records with almost 100% coverage from their start to 1837.The present task is to do the same for Marriages throughout the county.

Shropshire is perhaps unusual in being spread across 3 dioceses, St Asaph’s, Hereford and Lichfield although that changed in 1837 to just Lichfield and Hereford.

We have a Helpdesk within the Shropshire Archives when they are fully open New Members are always welcome using the application form on the Website.

Available Records

Explore the Shropshire Family History Society records available on Findmypast.

  • Shropshire Quarter Sessions Rolls Index, 1831-1920