Uruguay Quick Start Guide

South America Uruguay

Uruguay: Ancestor's birth, marriage, or death location unknown
FamilySearch Indexed Records: Try searching in the indexed records for the name of the ancestor if they were born before 1900. Limit your results to the country of Uruguay and the name of the department if known. If no results, the patron will have to find more information from home sources or by asking family members.

Contact family members: If they do not have even a minimal amount of information AND have no idea of where and when to look, encourage them to contact family members who might have that information. This could be older aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc.

Uruguay: Ancestor's birth, marriage, or death location and names of parents, children, or spouse are known
FamilySearch Indexed Records: Try searching first in indexed records. Try a variety of searches with your ancestor's name, or with the parents' names, or just by parents' surnames AND using the option to limit the locality by country, Uruguay, and under event use ANY and the name of the department in Uruguay.

Civil Registration Index: If there are no results from the previous search for the ancestor or any siblings, you will have to use microfilms for the locality. Civil Registration began in 1879 in Uruguay. The Civil Registration of Uruguay has a National Index from 1900-1930. This is found in the catalog under Uruguay Civil Registration - Indexes. Before 1900 you will need to go to the department in order to find the Civil Registration. These also include indexes. In order to find the birth, marriage, or death you need to use the index to find the section number and then go to the appropriate section where the event of the ancestor occurred.

Catholic Church Records Index: Catholic Church Records are also a good choice as they cover all time periods. There is a nationwide index of church record transcriptions for the years 1791-1880. Begin with these indexes and use the information to find the correct microfilm for the transcription. There are also some church records found on the local level. If you can find the ancestor in both types, that is best as you will get more information to advance the pedigree.

FamilySearch Catalog: The original images for the records of Uruguay are not online. You will need to use the catalog in order to locate the microfilm of your records.

Research strategies
Who to search for? If you don't know the names of the parents, but you know the name of the spouse and/or the names of some of his children, begin with a marriage search (if the married in Uruguay and you know the place). Or begin with a search for the birth/baptism record for one of their children (if you have an approximate birth date and place).

Immigrant ancestor who went to Uruguay
FamilySearch Wiki: See the articles Argentina: Emigration and Immigration and Uruguay: Inmigración (Spanish) for a list of websites you can search. Many people who went to Uruguay went through Argentina so many of the websites for Argentina are applicable to Uruguay. There are more resources on the FamilySearch Wiki in Spanish in the article Argentina: Inmigración. The links between the english and Spanish versions of the articles can be found at the bottom of the page.

Finding a locality

 * Google Maps
 * Wikipedia (the Spanish version works the best)
 * Try a keyword search in the FamilySearch Catalog for Uruguay Gazetteers.

Online Resources
For other online resources please review the Wiki article Hispanic Genealogy Resources Online.