The Mad Genealogist

What are the different types of church Records?

Baptism and Christening Records

Baptism or christening records almost always list at least the name of the person baptized, the date and place of birth, and the date and place of the baptism. For infant baptisms, the pastor usually recorded the parents’ names and often their place of residence, particularly if the pastor was serving a circuit rather than a single parish. Quite often, the register lists the date of birth or at least the age of the person being baptized. In addition, many baptismal records list the names of sponsors or godparents, who are often close relatives of the parents.

Marriage Records

The second major type of church records are marriage records. Almost all American denominations have recorded marriages, although there are some interesting exceptions. For instance, the early Puritans viewed marriage as a civil contract. Hence, marriages were performed by a civil magistrate and were not recorded in the church registers. This was not a typical situation, however. In most areas, church marriage records predate civil marriage records by many decades and sometimes even centuries. For instance, South Carolina did not record marriages (except for marriage contracts) at the county or state level until 1911. In such situations, church marriage records acquire greater importance.

Church marriage records vary widely in content. Some provide nothing more than the names of the bride and groom and the date. Catholic, Lutheran, and German Reformed marriage records frequently list the birthplace of the bride and groom.

Death Records

Church marriage records are often useful in locating an immigrant ancestor’s birthplace, but, in my professional experience, church death registers have been the single most valuable source for tracing an immigrant’s place of birth. Originally, churches recorded burials rather than deaths, and some churches still do. However, most American church records also list the date of death, and often they record a great deal more information.

Confirmation Records

While most genealogists are aware of the value of baptismal, marriage, and death records, they sometimes overlook other types of church records that also contain valuable genealogical and historical information; confirmation records are a case in point. Most how-to books dismiss them as mere name lists, which, admittedly, is often the case. However, those of the Scandinavian Lutheran denominations contain voluminous information, as do present-day Episcopal churches.

Scandinavian-American Lutheran confirmation records typically contain exceptionally valuable genealogical information. German-American Lutheran and Reformed confirmation records often contain the date of baptism and sometimes the place. Episcopal churches include records of baptism in the confirmation records and file a report with the bishop. Catholic confirmation records seldom contain the place of baptism. Most American Protestant denominations, if they perform confirmations at all, merely list the names of those confirmed and the date of the event, marking the young person’s entry into full membership in the congregation. Some also give the ages of those confirmed, yielding more precise estimates of birth data and identities.

Membership Records

Confirmation records lead to another category of church sources: membership records. One type of membership record is communicant lists. While not as valuable to the genealogist as the records already discussed, they can be of great help in reconstructing a family history. The sudden disappearance of a couple from the communicant lists may signify their departure from the community. The disappearance of one but not the other may indicate death, an important clue if the death records no longer exist.

Usually, the regular membership list is of greater genealogical value. In some cases, however, it too may be only a name list. But by the late nineteenth century, many Protestant churches kept fairly good membership records. The particular value of this record is in the information it contains about the movement of members in and out of the congregation. Some of these “removals” or “dismissals” occurred well after 1930, the date of the latest federal census available to the public. The implications for the genealogist seeking heirs rather than ancestors are obvious. Church records should not be dismissed as irrelevant for periods after civil registration began in a given state or community.

Other Types of Church Records

In addition to the types of records discussed above, local parishes or congregations created many other genealogically valuable types of church records: minutes of the church council or vestry, disciplinary records, pew rentals, and family registers, among others. If the ancestor was active in church affairs, such records can be invaluable for reconstructing the family’s history.

Many genealogists overlook church records created at the diocesan or denominational level. Admittedly, many such records lie moldering in church archives and are not easily accessible. But when such records are available, they can be of very great genealogical value. For example, bishops of the Episcopal Church keep records of “Episcopal Acts,” which include ordinations, confirmations, and admission and dismissal of clergy. Obituaries of some of the pastors provide invaluable genealogical data that is otherwise unavailable.

Obituaries can be found in another type of church record: the denominational or diocesan newspaper. Many of these contain obituaries of lay members as well as clergymen and their wives.

Church annuals and directories contain lists of clergy. In the Episcopal Church such directories, annuals, and almanacs were first published in the 1830s. The Episcopal Church Clerical Directory is now published biennially by the Church Hymnal Corporation, a subsidiary of the Church Pension Fund.

Church records rank among the most promising of genealogical records available. Indeed, for periods before the advent of civil registration of vital statistics (a very late development in many American states), church records rank as the best available sources for information on specific vital events: birth, marriage, and death.

They are also among the most under-used major records in American genealogy. Part of the reason lies in the number of denominations—there are hundreds of them. Identifying and locating the records of these various churches makes even professional genealogists hesitate. Yet the task is not impossible. Microfilming, photocopying, and indexing techniques make church records more accessible now than ever before.

Church records vary a great deal in content and emphasis according to the basic theology and social role of each denomination. However, a useful distinction is the difference between “state” churches and so-called “free” churches. State, or “established,” churches in Europe considered every Christian in the state or kingdom to be a member. Free, or “gathered,” churches emphatically rejected this inclusive view of belonging from birth. Rather, only those who had been “born again” in Christ could be considered true members of his church. The sign of this rebirth in Christ was another baptism (adult baptism) that took precedence over the person’s baptism as an infant. For this practice they were called Anabaptists—from the Latin for “rebaptizers.” The descendants of the Anabaptists include Mennonites, Hutterites, many smaller groups associated with the Pennsylvania Germans, and their British cousins, the Baptists, who form the dominant religion in much of America today.

Because Anabaptists saw the most important event in a person’s life as his or her rebirth in Christ, not his or her physical birth, their records reflect the difference. Baptist records contain much valuable historical information about the activities of adult members, but they do not always deliver accurate birth information. In contrast, Lutherans meticulously recorded infant births and subsequent parish baptisms.

Of course, theology is not the only factor that has determined the types of records kept. In Scandinavia and many German states, the Lutheran church was the established church. Thus, the pastor was a quasi-public official who was the official recorder of births, deaths, and marriages. Similarly, in England, a 1538 Act of Parliament required all ministers of the Church of England to record baptisms, marriages, and burials in their parishes. In 1597, another parliamentary act reinforced the original law, requiring that duplicates of parish records be sent annually to the bishop of the pertinent diocese, initiating the valuable “bishops’ transcripts.”

In Scotland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and certain German states where Calvinism became the established faith, pastors were also official record keepers. Not all German Protestants were Lutherans. In many German states, most notably in Prussia, the state church combined Lutheran and Calvinist elements, resulting in long-range consequences when German immigrants organized churches in the New World.

In areas of Europe where Roman Catholicism was the established faith, parish priests were the official recorders of baptisms, marriages, and burials. They were accountable to more than local parliaments, however. In 1563, the church’s Council of Trent issued a decree requiring proof of baptism before marriage. Subsequent decrees reinforced this edict, notably that of Pope Paul V in 1614, which made parish registers obligatory.

Church record-keeping transcended national and religious boundaries. It was a manifestation of a stage of European civilization that emphasized rationality and bureaucracy. Human memory and oral tradition no longer sufficed. The written record prevailed.

This background is relevant to discussion of American church records because habits, attitudes, and ecclesiastical edicts crossed oceans with the emigrants. The various immigrant churches, including those that developed in Plymouth Colony in the 1620s, reflected European philosophy and practices. In fact, most of the American colonies promptly established state churches. In New England, the Congregational Church generally held preferred status. In the southern colonies (Virginia, Georgia, and South Carolina), the Church of England (Protestant Episcopal) became the established church, as it was in Maryland for a time, even though that colony was originally founded as a haven for Roman Catholics. As long as the Dutch controlled New Netherland (now New York), the Dutch Reformed Church served as the established church.

Some of these established churches functioned on a state level until well after the American Revolution, but the variety of immigrant groups and religious preferences ultimately defeated all attempts to impose religious uniformity. The Founding Fathers recognized this fact, totally separating church and state nationally when they drew up the Constitution. The wisdom of this decision was verified by the Great Awakening of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which shook established churches to the core and guaranteed that American religious life would be fundamentally different from that of the Old World.

The United States possesses a tremendous, sometimes bewildering, variety of religious groups that have widely differing record-keeping practices. Nevertheless, certain basic types of records found at the parish, or local, level can be identified.