In my recent post, “IOW Consolidated Card Index to Parish Registers”, I wrote about the FHL microfilms of the card catalogue that are available for borrowing from the Family History Library. I recently went online to the Family Search website and ordered microfilms 1279043 and 1279044 to be sent to my local library here in Canada. These are the films that contain the index cards for the surname of Williams. I’ve been diligently scrolling through the films and transferring the data from the cards into an Excel spreadsheet for future reference. I’ve completed all of the baptisms, marriages and burials.
Because the Williams surname has so many records, the statistics from my spreadsheet are probably of interest to all IOW researchers.
BAPTISMS
- There were 863 Williams baptisms from 1544 to 1858.
- There are 264 different given names recorded at the baptism of the Williams children. The most common is John, followed closely by William, James, Mary, Elizabeth, Jane, George, Thomas, Sarah and Ann.
- More Williams baptisms took place in 1821 and 1841 than any other years.
- The most popular date for a baptism was Lady’s day, March 25th.
- The most common father’s names were John, William, James, George and David.
- The most common mother’s names were Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Ann and Sarah.
- There are 137 baptism records where no mother’s name is given. Most of these are before 1800 but the Newport registers continued to leave out the mother’s name long after the other parishes had started recording it.
MARRIAGES
- There were 337 Williams marriages recorded in the index from 1555 through to 1858. Of these, 154 involved Williams brides and 183 involved Williams grooms.
- The most marriages occurred in 1805 and 1835.
- More marriages were recorded at Brading than any other parish. Newchurch was a close second.
- Most IOW marriage records do not include the names of the bride and grooms parents.
BURIALS
- There were 513 Williams burials recorded between 1544 and 1858.
- The highest two years for burials were 1849 and 1828.
- More burials were recorded at Brading with 126 burials with Newport coming in second at 86 burials.
- In earlier years, ages were not recorded; in later years they were almost always recorded.
- Where age was recorded, 20% of deaths were infants between ages 0 and 2 years of age and 36% died before the age of 20.
- .As might be expected, more people died during the winter months, although there is a surprising decrease in deaths during November and December.
