Church Records – The Ancestor Hunt

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

I recently found a mention of one of my ancestor’s date and location of death in a church newsletter in Berlin, Germany. What a find!

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:

There is a large number of Free Online Church Record collections; the links accessible by state below:

Good Luck and Happy Hunting!