Searching Church Records
By Lisa South - Certified Genealogist
Before
you begin searching...
Before you begin searching for your
ancestors in church records, (link to this same page) you have
to determine with which church those ancestors were affiliated. Often
this information is passed down through the family. An obituary, family
bible or artifact often will give you your clue. If you do not know
which church(s) your ancestors attended, or if there were no churches
of their denomination close to where they lived, you should conduct
a "spiral" map search. Through land records, locate where
your ancestor lived. Search the history of that area (many county histories
will mention the churches that were established in that county) and
find which churches were there at that time and locate the churches
and your ancestor's property on your map. Starting from your ancestor's
home draw a spiral out. Search the records of the closest church and
continue until you have found the records of your ancestors (need
to make a link) or have established that they are not on any of the
church records.
Once you locate the church your ancestors
attended, determine if that Church's records have been published. Many
are online and many can be searched at your local LDS Family History
(need to make a link) Library. If the records have not been published,
find out if the old records are still in the custody of that church.
If not, question the minister; he might know if the records have been
collected to a central repository. Find out if local libraries or historical
societies have collected church records. If the church is not extant,
the chamber of commerce or older people in the community may know where
the records are being stored.
Remember, church records are made to
fill the needs of the church not the needs of the genealogist, so some
church records give very little genealogical information while others
are a veritable gold mine.
Tracking down Church records can take
a lot of money (in the form of long distance phone calls, trips, etc)
and time. Before you make that investment, you'll definitely want to
check OneGreatFamily.com to see if the
work has already been done by other family genealogy (need to
make a link) enthusiasts, and which sources they may have already identified.
All to we end up duplicating the efforts of others, doing the same research
someone else has already been done. OneGreatFamily (make link) automactically
searches for you and identifies connections between your efforts and
the efforts of other members working on the same family tree
(need to make a link.) even while you sleep.
