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-dated 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:
- Free Illinois Online Church Records
- Free Indiana Online Church Records
- Free Iowa Online Church Records
- Free Kansas Online Church Records
- Free Michigan Online Church Records
- Free Minnesota Online Church Records
- Free Missouri Online Church Records
- Free Nebraska Online Church Records
- Free North Dakota Online Church Records
- Free Ohio Online Church Records
- Free Oklahoma Online Church Records
- Free South Dakota Online Church Records
- Free Wisconsin Online Church Records
Good Luck and Happy Hunting!
