Help please - which county??

[AussieGenealogy]

I emailed Wear Valley Yorkshire regarding Howden Le Wear cemetery only to be told that this cemetery is in Durham.
What I am tyring to locate is  Howden county.
Can some one please explain exactly where it is??
Thanks in advance
Annie
  (totally confused now!!)
            

[Little Nell]

Hi Annie,

There is no county called Howden in England I'm afraid.  Howden le Wear is most definitely in County Durham (the only county in England to have the distinction of the word county in its title, I believe).

To help locate places in England, have a look around the county pages at:

http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/index.html

This may help you.  There are also gazetteers on all the individual county pages.

Nell

[AussieGenealogy]

Thanks Nell for that now I am even more confused!
My dilemma is that someone here managed to locate my grandfathers death record and apparently it was registered as Howden Eats Riding of Yorkshire- I was also lucky to get the vol and page number.
I have sent off for the death certificate but I am trying to pin point which cemetery he is buried in.

so if theres no Howden where on earth is he??

[behindthefrogs]

Howden was a parish in the East Riding of Yorkshire and since it was at the very south western end of the Riding on the border with the West Riding there is no chance that it has since migrated into Durham.

The County is thus Yorkshire although because it was so large the three Ridings into which it divides were almost treated as counties.

David

[Daisypetal]

Hi Annie,

This is almost the same link as Nell sent,

http://www.fhsc.org.uk/genuki/reg/districts/index.html

but maybe easier to use if you're not use to our english Counties

Daisy

[AussieGenealogy]

Thanks Daisy and David,
Acording to the genuki site/s Howden was/is a part of ER Yorkshire but as I read it known as Howdenshire etc.. Howden stopped being in 1937 Howdenshire up until 1974.
so its Howdenshire I am chasing now for a death in 1953, although it still doesn't explain the Wear Valley saying its Durham I need (lol) someone in the office doesn't know her areas either! hahaha

[behindthefrogs]

Sorry but there was never an English County of Howdenshire.  My information came from the Phillimore maps of English Counties as they were in 1832.  The parish of Howden was formed in 1543.

[Daisypetal]

Hi Annie,

Sorry to confuse you    try the following...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howden-le-Wear

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howden,_East_Riding_of_Yorkshire

That should help  

Daisy

[Little Nell]

Annie,

Do not confuse the registration district - Howden - with a county.  Registration districts are a much smaller administrative unit than a county and did not come into existence until 1837.  They are used for registering births, marriages and deaths, and for the census.  They were based on the Poor Law Unions which sometimes crossed county boundaries.  The place names that you see in the GRO indexes are registration districts, NOT counties.  Counties date back to the time of William the Conqueror - or thereabouts. 

This link will take you to a highly coloured map of the counties of England prior to the 1974 boundary changes.  As you can see from the list, there is no county called Howden or Howdenshire. 

http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/Britain.html

Daisy's link takes you to a list of the registration districts.  To make sense of it all, you will need to understand both.  But I see from the link that when Howden ceased to be a registration district (as they do sometimes) the clowns in the charge renamed it Howdenshire  .  How to confuse someone from overseas in one easy lesson.

Nell

Modified to include the link which I forget to put in