Barbados Department of Archives

Barbados in the 17th and 18th centuries was divided into 11 parishes. In the 19th century, additional churches were built. The 11 original parishes remained as the units of local government and although the vestries were abolished in 1959, the parish boundaries still remain for some administrative purposes.

The early church registers are unindexed, but in the 19th century, when the Central Registry was established, the existing church registers were copied and the copies deposited in the Registry. These copies were indexed, and there is a series of indexes covering all existing church registers (known as "Parochial Registers").

Registers of baptisms, marriages and burials were presumably kept, dating from the foundation of each parish church, but the surviving records are by no means complete, nor were they complete when the Central Registry was created.