3,660 Free Southern States Online Church Records

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 about 15,000 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 shortlist 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 in the region are below:

(Updated August 2022)

• Free Alabama Online Church Records
• Free Arkansas Online Church Records
• Free Florida Online Church Records
• Free Georgia Online Church Records
• Free Kentucky Online Church Records
• Free Louisiana Online Church Records
• Free Mississippi Online Church Records
• Free Missouri Online Church Records
• Free North Carolina Online Church Records
• Free Oklahoma Online Church Records
• Free South Carolina Online Church Records
• Free Tennessee Online Church Records
• Free Texas Online Church Records
• Free Virginia Online Church Records
• Free West Virginia Online Church Records