The Mad Genealogist

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.