Parish records for West Yorkshire were released on Ancestry this week. Not many ancestors or distant relations in this area, and the few who were in Leeds had left Poland, presumably due to the persecution of Jews there. Parish records were of course held (and created) by the Church of England, so are very unlikely to include those of the Jewish faith. I had a look, just in case.
There is no sign of the Brookstone family in these records, but the related Gladstones do appear. Toba Lazarus, who married Isaac Brookston 1865, had previously married Moses Gladstone – originally Gluckstein – in 1860 {1}. Son Moses/Morris/Maurice Gladstone marries Charlotte Annie Jane Waterfield in St Georges Church, Leeds 1889 and the baptism and marriage records of two of their daughters are available. Surely they must have changed religion. The element of doubt is that no death/burial records have been spotted so far – could they have reverted at the last resort?
And do I assume the Brookstones kept the faith from their absence in the parish records? The surname does get misspelt and mis-transcribed a lot but I have checked several variations.
PS Ancestry – why do new records not get properly recognised by your Family Tree Maker software until several weeks after release? It is annoying having to save images in a separate process and then re-transcribe the info.
Note 1. See Finding that elusive Jewish connection
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