Another underutilized genealogy resource is Church Records. We tend to focus our research on civil records, but need to be aware that often church records pre-date civil records and are a great resource as well. In the BMD Records section of this website, there are over 25,000 collections of civil records that are available online. Yes, that’s a lot, but we need to also search church records as well.
What can we find in church or synagogue records? Here’s just a short list of what nuggets we can find:
- Baptisms and Christenings
- Marriages
- Deaths
- Burials
- Confirmations
- Membership lists
- Church Minutes
- Church Directories
- Transfer Letters
- Bar or Bat Mitzvahs
- Sunday School lists
- Church newsletters
In addition, many folks also documented important events in family bibles, so they need to be searched as well if the event information has been digitized.
Here are a couple of articles that you might find useful:
- U.S. Church Records Research Guide
- United States Church Records
- A Genealogist’s Guide to Using Catholic Records in Genealogy Research
There is a large number of Free Online Church Record collections; the links for each state are below:
(Updated June 2023)
- Free Connecticut Online Church Records
- Free Maine Online Church Records
- Free Massachusetts Online Church Records
- Free New Hampshire Online Church Records
- Free Rhode Island Online Church Records
- Free Vermont Online Church Records
Good Luck and Happy Hunting!
3 replies on “1,020 Free New England States Online Church Records”
These are only for fee sites. What blue button is to your site. The one to the manuscripts are all for fee too. What am I missing? Diane
There are six blue links near the bottom, one for each state in New England. Click on the state that you are interested in and it will take you to that state’s links to free church record collections. Those are listed in blue also.
Ads are frustrating and inserted about every 2 inches when you are viewing this on a phone. You just have to keep scrolling. This doesn’t happen to me when I view on a computer. Marks links are GREAT!