This booklet was compiled by members of the Devon Family History Society in co-operation with the Devon Records Office. The booklet provides an extract of some information and further details may be obtained from the Devon Records Office. Ashburton Independent Chapel [also known as Ashburton Great Meeting] was founded as an English Presbyterian meeting in 1665. It was licensed in 1672, and was continuous thereafter. It was Ashburton’s earliest nonconformist congregation, and is believed to have met in a converted barn, which stood where the chapel was later constructed in North Street, Ashburton in 1739. The baptism register from which this index is taken is the second register for this chapel held at Devon Record Office [ref: 5103D/2], and is in the form of a small hardback notebook with the following label on the front cover: ‘Baptismal Register For the Independent Chapel Ashburton’. The title page inside the notebook states that the volume is ‘a true copy of the Baptismal Register of the Independent Congregation of Dissenters Ashburton commencing April 20 1817 the whole was copied by me Lavington Evans’. It therefore begins as a copy of the above mentioned register surrendered in 1837 to the Registrar-General, with entries from April 1817 to July 1837, and continues with later original baptismal entries from August 1837 which end in December 1881. This index, however, only covers part of this baptism register, beginning with entries in 1840 and ending in December 1881.