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This is a tremendous website
http://surman.english.qmul.ac.uk
I have been very fortunate to find 7 useful records from this website - this is the kind of
information I’ve got just from one of them:
‘Number on Index 1883 CROMPTON JAMES Born 1821 (Ch. mem., Cannon Street Preston). Died 9 January 1898 Cheetham Hill (Manchester)
1840-1843 Blackburn Academy; rem. to Lancashire 1843-45
1843 Lancashire Independent College
Did not enter the Ministry but became Deacon and prominent Sunday School
worker at Cannon Street, Preston where he followed teaching profession.
Subsequently removed from Preston to Manchester, where known in scholastic
circles as a Professor of English. Died at home of his son-in-law at Cheetham Hill, 9 January 1898 age 76; buried Preston Cemetery. B. Nightingale in Blackburn Times March 192.’
Charles Surman’s extraordinary biographical card index of Congregational ministers was given to Dr Williams’s Library in 1960. The Surman Index Online makes the contents available electronically via the internet for the first time. The index includes the names of about 32,000 ministers, and, where known, their dates, details of their education, ministries or other employment, together with the sources used. It covers the period from the mid-seventeenth century to 1972, and though it focuses on England and Wales, it includes Congregational ministers serving abroad provided they trained or served as ministers in Britain. Although intended as an index of Congregational ministers, it also gives details of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Presbyterians. The card index has been much used by academics and by local and family historians.
This open access online edition has been funded by a Small Research Grant from the British Academy with further grants from the Congregational Memorial Hall Trust and Dr Williams’s Trust. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support received from these bodies, without which the work could not have been undertaken.
Do have a look at it and see if you can find any records for your own research.
Related articles
- Cheetham Lancashire Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales Circa 1870 (parishmouse.wordpress.com)
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