Presbyterian | Genealogy Gems

US Church Records for Genealogy and More Now Online

by Sunny | Apr 20, 2018 | 01 What's New, Church, Records & databases

Using US church records for genealogy can help you solve brick walls in your family history research. Now online: Swedish-American, Presbyterian, Catholic and Methodist! Also: Connecticut newspapers, NY passenger lists, and vital records from Michigan, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Tennessee.

Featured: Swedish American church records

New on Genealogy Giant Ancestry.com is a collection you’ll want to search if you have Swedish roots: U.S., Evangelical Covenant Church, Swedish American Church Records, 1868-1970. According to the site, “The records in this collection consist of administrative records from select affiliates of the Evangelical Covenant Church in America. Indexes have been provided for baptisms, marriages, burials, and membership records (arrivals, dismissals, and member lists), as well as congregational histories and biographical files of church leaders.”

“The member lists in particular have a wealth of information, including vital dates and emigration information. Some member lists may include the location in Sweden an individual or family was originally from. Records are written in either English or Swedish.” Although Swedish immigrants most famously settled the farmlands of the Midwest, this collection includes records from all over the country. States include CA, CO, CT, FL, ID, IL, IA, KS, MA, MI, MN, MO, NE, NJ, NH, NY, PA, RI, SD, TX, VT, WA, WI and WY. A smaller, related collection is also new at Ancestry.com is U.S., Evangelical Free Church of America, Swedish American Church Records, 1800-1946.

Ancestry.com has also been adding to another U.S. church record collection on the site: U.S., Presbyterian Church Records, 1701-1970. “This collection currently includes baptism, marriage, death, burial, and other records from Presbyterian churches” in 48 states and Washington, D.C., states the collection description. “Records from additional churches will be added in future updates to this collection.” This collection now contains more than 4.5 million records and is sourced from original church registers at the Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

More US church records, vital records and more…by state

Connecticut. The Genealogy Giant MyHeritage.com has published a new collection with more than 2.3 million records: Connecticut Newspapers, 1791-2009. Among titles included in this list are The Catholic Press, Meriden Record, Meridan (Daily) Journal, Record-Journal, The Norwalk Hour, Meriden Daily/Weekly Republican, Hartford Weekly Times, The Ridgefield Press, The Wilton Bulletin, The Journal, Bridgeport Morning News, Bridgeport Herald, The Redding Pilot, The Evening Hour, The Bristol Herald and The Branford Opinion.

Massachusetts. The New England Historic Genealogical Society continues to update its collections of Massachusetts: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston Records, 1789-1900 on subscription site AmericanAncestors.org. Recent additions (with thousands of names) include the parishes of St. Bernard (Newton), St. Ann (Dorchester), St. Anthony of Padua (Allston) St. Jean Baptiste (Lowell), St. Augustine (South Boston) and Immaculate Conception (Marlborough).

For your information, Ancestry.com hosts a related database that has also recently been updated: Massachusetts, Boston Archdiocese Roman Catholic Sacramental Records, 1789-1900.

Michigan. Ancestry.com has updated Michigan, Death Records, 1867-1950, now with over 8.3 million records! According to the site, “this collection contains death registers (1867-1897) as well as certificates (1897-1941)…. Due to privacy laws, images are only available for records that are more than 75 years old.”

Montana. Ancestry.com has updated Montana, County Marriage Records, 1865-1993, with “county marriage records from various counties in Montana. Details vary, but may include the following information for both the bride and groom: name, age at marriage, marriage date, marriage place [and] parents’ names.

New Hampshire. Now on Findmypast.com is a browse-only collection, New Hampshire, Town Clerk, Vital and Town Records 1636-1947, with more than 400,000 vital and town records acquired from the offices of local town clerks in New Hampshire. According to the site, “The collection includes records of births, marriages, and deaths; vital registers; indexes; minutes of meetings; and records of other civic activities.” (This collection comes from FamilySearch; you can search their free index and images here.)

Also for New Hampshire: Ancestry.com has updated its collection, New Hampshire, Marriage and Divorce Records, 1659-1947.

New Jersey. After a recent update, Ancestry.com now boasts nearly three-quarters of a million records in its collection New Jersey, United Methodist Church Records, 1800-1970. These are sourced from the Greater New Jersey United Methodist Church Commission on Archives and History in Madison, New Jersey, and includes baptism, marriage, burial, and membership records from mostly-closed churches within that region.

Also for New Jersey: the nonprofit activist group Reclaim the Records has published New Jersey Marriage Index, 1901-2016 and New Jersey Birth, Marriage, and Death Indices, 1901-1903 and 1901-1914 on the Internet Archive, making them “totally digital, and totally free—forever.” Subscribers of Genealogy Giant Findmypast.com may find it more convenient to search part of these records on Findmypast in New Jersey Death Index 1901-1903 and New Jersey Marriage Index 1901-1914.

New York. The collection New York State, Passenger and Crew Lists, 1917-1967 has recently been updated at Ancestry.com, now with nearly 9.5 million records. The collection description includes this explanation: “Contained in this database are passenger arrival and departure lists, and crew arrival and departure lists for vessels that were filed at various ports in New York. The captain or master of each vessel was required to submit these lists to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) upon arrival if they had departed from a Canadian or other foreign port, or whose last scheduled U.S. port of arrival was in New York.”

Tennessee. Ancestry.com has updated its collection Tennessee, Death Records, 1908-1958, so that it now boasts nearly 3.9 records. According to the collection description, “This collection contains information regarding: name of the deceased, age at time of death, death place, death date, gender, birth date, birthplace, parents’ names [and] parents’ birthplace. Additional information, such as occupation, cause of death, and date and place of burial, may be available on the original record and can be obtained by viewing the image. The name of the informant providing this information is also given, and may be useful in evaluating the reliability of the data.” A related Tennessee collection at Ancestry.com has also been updated recently: Tennessee, City Death Records, 1872-1923.

Find your Swedish ancestors

Are you intrigued by those new Swedish American church records but you’re not sure how to find your Swedish ancestors in them–or what the records say if you DO find their names? Beginning Swedish genealogy can be daunting. But don’t let language barriers or unfamiliar naming traditions deter you! Check out these getting-started tips for Swedish research from an expert at Legacy Tree Genealogists.

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links and Genealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting Genealogy Gems!

About the Author: Sunny Morton

Sunny is a Contributing Editor at Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems; her voice is often heard on the Genealogy Gems Podcast and Premium Podcasts. She’s known for her expertise on the world’s biggest family history websites (she’s the author of Genealogy Giants: Comparing the 4 Major Websites); writing personal and family histories (she also wrote Story of My Life: A Workbook for Preserving Your Legacy); and sharing her favorite reads for the Genealogy Gems Book Club.

We Dig These Gems: New Genealogy Records Online

by Lisa Cooke | May 1, 2015 | 01 What's New, Ancestry, British, Church, Findmypast, images, MyHeritage, Records & databases

Every Friday, we highlight new genealogy records online. Scan these posts for content that may include your ancestors. Use these records to inspire your search for similar records elsewhere. Always check our Google tips at the end of each list: they are custom-crafted each week to give YOU one more tool in your genealogy toolbox.

This week: British POWs in World War I, North Carolina marriages, and church records for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and various denominations in Scotland.

BRITISH POWs IN WWI. Prisoners Of War 1914-1920, with over 43,000 records with images at FindMyPast, consists of “10 series of British Foreign Office documents relating to prisoners held by the Ottomans during World War One. They not only include the names of military personnel taken prisoner–both allied and foreign–but also the names of civilians, merchant seamen, fishermen, diplomatic employees and more.” Some documents “contain the names, ranks and locations of PoWs and provide insights into life in the Ottoman camps. They contain details of requests made by inmates for items including footballs and biscuits, details of visits by foreign diplomats and reports on camp conditions.”

NORTH CAROLINA MARRIAGE RECORDS. Ancestry has a new collection of North Carolina “marriage bonds, licenses, certificates, and registers, as well as indexes and abstracts to the various records from 87 North Carolina counties….Of special interest to African American researchers are records of cohabitation, which were required to be recorded in 1866 in order for the marriages of recently emancipated slaves to be legally recognized.” The records span 1741-2011.

SCOTLAND CHURCH RECORDS. Births, baptisms, banns and marriages, deaths and burials are among a slew of newer records searchable on MyHeritage.com. According to the site, “The records in this collection were taken from Kirk Session material of the Church of Scotland, other Presbyterian churches, and also the registers of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). These parish registers cover a wide range of dates (from 17th to 19th century) and many of them are not to be found in any other record source.” Information listed in these records may include names, family relationships, dates and places of events and details of the parish.

U.S. LUTHERAN CHURCH RECORDS. Baptism, confirmation, marriage and burial records from more than 2000 congregations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (1875-1940) are now on Ancestry. These have been available on Archives.com but have migrated to its parent site. “The information…varies from congregation to congregation (and sometimes from minister to minister). In some ethnic congregations, you may run into records in German, Danish, or some other language….Within the collection you may also find membership records, with some listing the names and dates of admission, communion records, and how they were received into the church.”

Google tip of the week: If you see a record collection online but don’t have a subscription to the website that hosts it, Google the name of the database. See whether a free site (like FamilySearch) or another site to which you do have access also hosts the same data set or a similar one. Can’t find it? Click on the description of the record collection (you can generally read the description even if you can’t search the records themselves) and read its source. It may come from a book or a resource that’s been microfilmed–something you can search for on WorldCat and borrow to a library near you. This tip is brought to you by The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox, 2nd edition–fully revised and updated in 2015!