How to write the history of a parish

HOW TO WRITE The History of a Parish.
BY J. CHARLES COX, Author of “Notes on the Churches of Derbyshire,” etc.
“Every man’s concern with the place where he lives, has something more in it than the mere amount of rates and taxes that he has to pay.”— Toulmin Smith.
LONDON: BEMROSE & SONS, 10, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS; AND DERBY. 1879.
ENTERED AT STATIONERS’ HALL.
TO THE REV. THOMAS PRESTON NOWELL BAXTER, M.A., (LATE FELLOW OF ST. CATHARINE’S COLL., CAMBRIDGE.) RECTOR OF HAWERBY, AND RURAL DEAN, WHO FIRST SUGGESTED THE WRITING OF THIS LITTLE HAND-BOOK, THESE PAGES ARE RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED.
Some of the Clergy of the Diocese of Lincoln are responsible for the issue of this booklet. A much-needed county history of Lincolnshire is now being projected, upon the basis of separate parochial histories. A circular put forth in one of the rural deaneries was good enough to refer in laudatory terms to the introduction to the first volume of my Notes on the Churches of Derbyshire . This led to my being asked to re-publish that introduction; but it applied so peculiarly to Derbyshire that I felt it would be of small avail to those outside the county. Hence I decided to put together some hints that might prove a help to those who may be desirous of undertaking parochial history in any part of the kingdom, whether manorial, ecclesiastical, or both. In the first part of these pages I am indebted to Thomas’s “Handbook to the Public Records,” and more especially to Sims’s invaluable “Manual for the Topographer and Genealogist;” but I have not referred to any class of documents with which I am not in some measure personally conversant.
Those who have been engaged in any literary work are well aware how large a portion of time is often spent in merely learning the titles and somewhat of the contents of those books that treat of the different branches of the subject selected. Various books connected with parochial history, especially those that have been proved by experience to be the best hand-books, are therefore mentioned in these pages to facilitate reference. Space only has prevented me from considerably adding both to their number and description, but any further knowledge that I may have gleaned on topographical literature is heartily at the disposal of any worker who may privately apply to me.