I am fortunate to have access to many of the parish register transcripts published by the Lancashire Parish Register Society and have recorded any entries for Houghtons that I could find for some of the parishes around Newton-le-Willows. A full list of the registers that have been published by the LPRS can be found on the GENUKI website. A few of these volumes, now out-of-print and out-of-copyright, have been digitised by Google and can be found on the internet for download. Try searching for “Lancashire Parish Register Society”.
The Registers of St Thomas, Ashton in Makerfield
The Registers of St Peter’s, Newton in Makerfield
The Registers of Burtonwood Chapel, Warrington
The Registers of St Oswald’s, Winwick
Parish registers of Hale, St Mary’s (1572-1828) and Childwall (1557-1753)
John Dolan has very generously given me a copy of transcsripts he has made of the Houghtons that he’s found in the above registers and they are available for download as a PDF file (78 KB).
John mentions that the Hale records are from the actual registers as they are not available in print, whereas the earlier Childwall records were transcribed from the printed volumes of the Lancashire Parish Record Society.
Parish Registers of Lancaster
I have searched the three volumes of Lancaster register transcripts published by the LPRS for HOUGHTON entries. The first volume covers the period 1599-1690, the second 1690-1748 and the third is for marriages between 1754 and 1777. I have combined these into a single PDF (1.6 MB), which also includes a copy of a photograph of the church (from the first volume) and a map showing the parish boundaries (from the second volume).
Parish Registers of Garstang
There are two volumes published by the LPRS that I have access to: Volume I (1567 – 1658) and Volume II (1660 – 1734). I have recorded all the listed variant spellings of HOUGHTON and HAUGHTON, which include; HAIGHTON, HAGHTON, HAIGTON, HAYGHTON, HORTON, HORTTON, HAUGTON and HOTTON. I have combined these into one PDF file (1.6 MB), which also includes a copy of a photograph of St. Helens church (from the first volume).
Parish Registers of Caton, Claughton, Gressingham, Hornby and Tatham
The above LPRS volume contains the earliest registers for the above parishes and the PDF of the transcript (74 KB) lists the surnames HOUGHTON, HAUGHTON and HORTON.