Counties of Jamaica: The 3 Counties and Their Parishes

The counties of Jamaica are Cornwall in the west, Middlesex in the middle and Surrey in the east. They were created in 1758 to make the holding of courts more convenient, and today they have no administrative role. Each of Jamaica’s 14 parishes sits inside one of them: five in Cornwall, five in Middlesex and four in Surrey.

If you have searched for “14 parishes in Jamaica” or a Jamaica map with parishes, you may have wondered where Cornwall, Middlesex and Surrey fit in. This post explains what those names mean, which parishes belong to which county, and why an old record might name a county, or a parish that no longer exists. For the full parish-by-parish picture, start with our map and guide to Jamaica’s 14 parishes for family historians.

TL;DR

Jamaica was organised into three counties, Cornwall, Middlesex and Surrey, in 1758 so that courts could be held more conveniently.
Counties have no administrative function today; parishes are the working units of local government.
Cornwall holds Hanover, St Elizabeth, St James, Trelawny and Westmoreland; Middlesex holds Clarendon, Manchester, St Ann, St Catherine and St Mary; Surrey holds Kingston, Portland, St Andrew and St Thomas.
A law of 1867 cut the number of parishes from 22 to 14, folding parishes such as Vere, St Dorothy, St David, St George and Metcalfe into their neighbours.
If an old record names a vanished parish, you can trace it to the modern parish and county that absorbed it.

Why Jamaica was divided into three counties
Which parishes are in each county
From 22 parishes to 14: the 1867 mergers
Why the counties still matter
Reading an old record that names a county or a lost parish

Why Jamaica was divided into three counties

Parishes came first. After the English took Jamaica, the island was divided into parishes from the 1660s onward, and by the middle of the eighteenth century they covered the whole island. In 1758 the parishes were grouped into three counties, Surrey, Middlesex and Cornwall, to make court administration more convenient. Statoids describes them as judicial districts, and Wikipedia’s summary says they followed the model of British county courts.

The names were borrowed from England. Cornwall is the westernmost county, as its namesake is in England, and Middlesex covers the middle of the island. Each county had a county town: Savanna-la-Mar for Cornwall, Spanish Town for Middlesex and Kingston for Surrey.

What counties did, and what parishes did

The difference matters for anyone reading old papers. Counties were about courts. Parishes were about daily life. From the 1660s each parish had a vestry, a local body drawn from its magistrates and clergy, which supported the clergy, kept up churches, helped the poor, maintained roads and kept public order. The vestries were abolished in 1866 after the Morant Bay Rebellion, and later parochial boards and parish councils took over local services. Through all of those changes, the parish remained the unit of local government and the unit in which baptisms, marriages and burials were recorded. The county never took on those jobs.

Which parishes are in each county

This table lists the 14 parishes by county, with the capital of each parish. The capitals agree across Statoids and Wikipedia.

County	Parish	Parish capital
Cornwall	Hanover	Lucea
Cornwall	St Elizabeth	Black River
Cornwall	St James	Montego Bay
Cornwall	Trelawny	Falmouth
Cornwall	Westmoreland	Savanna-la-Mar
Middlesex	Clarendon	May Pen
Middlesex	Manchester	Mandeville
Middlesex	St Ann	St Ann’s Bay
Middlesex	St Catherine	Spanish Town
Middlesex	St Mary	Port Maria
Surrey	Kingston	Kingston
Surrey	Portland	Port Antonio
Surrey	St Andrew	Half Way Tree
Surrey	St Thomas	Morant Bay

Two practical notes. Spanish Town was the island’s capital until 1872, when the seat of government moved to Kingston, so older records may treat Spanish Town, not Kingston, as the centre of things. And a fifteenth parish is on the way but not yet in force: the Counties and Parishes (Amendment) Act, 2025 provides for Portmore to be carved out of St Catherine, in Middlesex, but as of October 2026 the Gleaner reported that the law had not been brought into effect.

From 22 parishes to 14: the 1867 mergers

The parish map was never fixed. New parishes were cut from older ones as settlement spread. Westmoreland was formed from St Elizabeth in 1703, Hanover and Portland in the 1720s, Trelawny from St James in 1770, Manchester from parts of St Elizabeth, Clarendon and Vere in 1814, and Metcalfe from parts of St George and St Mary in the early 1840s. That brought the total to its peak of 22.

A law of 1867 then reduced the number by eight, to the 14 used today. The Gleaner dates the change to 23 April 1867. The parishes that disappeared went into these neighbours:

Vere (Middlesex) was absorbed by Clarendon.
St Dorothy, St John and St Thomas in the Vale (all Middlesex) were absorbed by St Catherine.
Metcalfe (Middlesex) was absorbed by St Mary.
St David (Surrey) joined St Thomas in the East, which became today’s St Thomas.
St George (Surrey) was absorbed by Portland, which also took part of St Thomas in the East.
Port Royal (Surrey) was divided between Kingston and St Andrew.

Port Royal has one more twist. It was re-established as a parish in 1901 and absorbed again in 1946 into the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation, according to the government’s local authorities history. If a twentieth-century document mentions the parish of Port Royal, that is why.

Why the counties still matter

The counties do no administrative work, but the names survive.

Cricket. County names are still used in Jamaican cricket. The 2025 Jamaica T10 tournament featured teams called Surrey Kings, Surrey Royals, Surrey Risers, Cornwall Warriors, Middlesex Titans and Middlesex United Stars.
Kingston and St Andrew. The counties never became local government, but parishes have been combined for that purpose. In 1923 the Kingston City Council and the St Andrew Parochial Board were amalgamated to form the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation, often called the Corporate Area. Both parishes are in Surrey. The parish of Kingston covers only part of the city; much of what people call Kingston lies in St Andrew.
Old records. Every vanished parish sat in one of the three counties, so the county name helps you place a lost parish on the modern map.

Reading an old record that names a county or a lost parish

For family historians, the counties are mainly a way to get your bearings.

Treat the county as a region, not an address. A county tells you roughly which third of the island you are in. To find records, you need the parish.
Translate old parish names before you search. Church of England registers were kept by parish, and the FamilySearch collection of Jamaican parish register transcripts for 1664 to 1880 is organised under all 22 historical parishes. An ancestor baptised in St Dorothy in 1820 will be filed under St Dorothy, not St Catherine. Search under the old name first, then look at the modern parish for later events.
Follow the boundary forward. Once you know that Vere went into Clarendon, or St David into St Thomas, you know which modern parish to use for later records, maps and fieldwork.
Expect small date differences. Sources disagree slightly on when the mergers happened. FamilySearch’s catalogue dates them to 1866, while the Gleaner and Statoids give 1867.
Watch the switch to civil registration. FamilySearch notes that civil registration replaced the parish register system, so for later births, marriages and deaths you move from church registers to the civil records.

Our perspective

At Maroon House Press we spend a lot of time with old place names, both in our heritage guides and in fiction rooted in Jamaican memory. Vere, St Dorothy and Metcalfe vanished from the map more than 150 years ago, but they did not vanish from people’s papers or from the way families spoke about where they came from. A grandmother who said she was “from Vere” was not wrong. She was using an older map.

We think the counties are best understood the same way: a frame laid over the island in 1758 for the convenience of the courts, which outlived its purpose and became part of how Jamaicans describe their own geography. Learning the frame does not find your ancestors for you, but it stops a strange name in a record from becoming a dead end.

FAQ

What are the three counties of Jamaica?

Cornwall in the west, Middlesex in the centre and Surrey in the east. They were created in 1758 to make court administration more convenient and have no administrative role today.

Which county is Kingston in?

Kingston is in Surrey, as are St Andrew, St Thomas and Portland. Kingston was also Surrey’s county town.

When did Jamaica get 14 parishes?

A law of 1867 reduced the number of parishes from 22 to 14 by merging eight parishes into their neighbours. The Gleaner dates the change to 23 April 1867.

Is Portmore a parish?

Not yet. A 2025 amendment to the Counties and Parishes Act provides for Portmore to become a parish carved from St Catherine, but as of October 2026 the law had not been brought into force.

My ancestor’s record says “St Thomas in the East.” Where is that now?

St Thomas in the East merged with St David in 1867 to form the modern parish of St Thomas, in Surrey, although part of it went to Portland. Search the older registers under the old parish name.

Sources

The parishes of Jamaica, The Gleaner
The story of the parishes: Portmore set to be first since 1867, The Gleaner
Portmore pushes for control of proposed parish lands, The Gleaner
Parishes of Jamaica, Statoids
Parish register transcripts, 1664-1880 (Jamaica, Church of England), FamilySearch Catalog
Local Government History, Local Authorities of Jamaica
Parishes of Jamaica, Wikipedia
Jamaica T10 2025: Full schedule, match timings, and live-streaming details, Sportskeeda

Counties of Jamaica: Cornwall, Middlesex and Surrey