Record columns
Reading a burial register, column by column
A burial register is the shortest of the three parish records and the one most often misread, because so much sits in a single cell: the name, a relationship ("wife of", "infant son of", "widow"), an age in years, months or days, and sometimes the abode and the cause. The date is the burial, usually one to three days after the death. Printed columns arrive in 1813 in England; earlier entries are a line of prose.
- Date
- 1500s onward; printed columns from 1813 in England
- Columns
- 10
- Handwriting
- The officiant's hand, hurried in epidemic years when entries crowd the page. The age column is where a 1 becomes a 7 and months become years.
The columns in order
| # | Column | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Entry no. | The register's own running number for the year. |
| 2 | Date of burial | The burial date; death was usually one to three days earlier. |
| 3 | Date of death | Given in some registers, deducible in others from the burial date. |
| 4 | Name of deceased | Often with a qualifier in the same cell: "wife of", "infant son of", "widow". |
| 5 | Age | Age at last birthday, as given by whoever answered the door. Infants in fractions ("2/12" is two months). Treat every age as within five years. |
| 6 | Abode | Where the deceased lived: a hamlet, a street, the workhouse, "this parish". |
| 7 | Cause of death | Written only in some registers: "consumption", "dropsy", "fever", "decline"; in Latin "senectus" (old age). |
| 8 | Relationship | In a burial register, the words "wife of", "son of", "widow of" that follow the name. |
| 9 | Officiant | The priest or minister, usually a signature or initials. |
| 10 | Notes | Margin notes: a later marriage, confirmation, emigration, or a correction. |
What to watch for on this form
- Age may be "3 weeks", "9 months", "81" or "aged"; infants are the majority of entries in most years.
- "Wife of", "son of", "daughter of", "widow of" in the name cell is the relationship — the husband or father named is alive, or "late".
- Abode is where the deceased lived, not where they died: a hamlet, a street, "the workhouse", "this parish".
- Cause of death appears in some registers only: consumption, dropsy, fever, decline, childbed, "accident"; Latin senectus is old age.
- A pauper burial is often marked "P" or "pauper".
Abbreviations and marks
- do / " / „ — ditto — the same as the line above
- Hd — head of household
- Wf — wife
- Dau — daughter
- S-in-L — son-in-law
- Bdr — boarder
- Svt — servant
- Na / Pa / Al — naturalized / first papers / alien
- O / R — home owned / rented
- F / M — free of mortgage / mortgaged
- W / B / Mu — white / black / mulatto in the color column
- S / M / W / D — single / married / widowed / divorced
- x, / , 1 — a tick in a yes/no column
- 2/12 — two months old
- Pa, O, Va, Ind, Ky — state abbreviations in the birthplace column
Type one person per line with cells separated by a tab or a |, in the column order above. Blank cells may be left empty; write [illegible] where you cannot read. The CSV is built by the same code the app uses for its export.
Questions
- Is the date in a burial register the date of death?
- No, the burial. Death was usually one to three days earlier, longer in winter or when the body travelled. Some registers give both dates; most do not.
- What does "of this parish" mean in a burial?
- That the deceased lived in the parish. A burial "of another parish" or with a town name means the body was brought in for burial, often to a family grave.
About this page
Column lists follow the printed schedule or register form; descriptions are in our own words from the National Archives' census instructions to enumerators, the FamilySearch Research Wiki and the usual parish-register handbooks. This is the same column list Cursive Lens reads the page against; a test in the app fails if the two ever disagree. Last reviewed 2026-10-17.