Roman Catholic Church in the United States

United States   Church Records   Roman Catholic Church Records 

Online Records

 * Drouin Collection: Early United States French Catholic Church Records, 1695-1954
 * This database only contains the French Catholic parish records from the United States:
 * It covers the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New York, and Pennsylvania.
 * The types of records include baptisms, marriages, and burials as well as confirmations, dispensations, censuses, statements of readmission to the church, and so on.
 * They are written mainly in French, as well as English, Latin, and Italian.

History

 * With 23% of the United States population as of 2018, the Catholic Church is the country's second largest religious grouping, after Protestantism, and the country's largest Church or religious denomination.
 * In the colonial era, the Spanish established missions that had permanent results in New Mexico and California (Spanish missions in California). The French set up Catholic villages in the Mississippi River region, notably, St. Louis and New Orleans. Some English Catholics settled in Maryland. In 1789 the Archdiocese of Baltimore was the first diocese in the newly independent nation.
 * In the mid-19th century there was political anti-Catholicism in the United States, sponsored by pietistic Protestants fearful of the pope. In the 20th century anti-Catholicism seldom appeared.
 * The number of Catholics grew rapidly in the 19th century, through high fertility and immigration, especially from Ireland, Germany, and after 1880, Eastern Europe and Italy. Large scale Catholic immigration from Mexico began after 1910 and in 2019 Latinos comprise 37 percent of American Catholics. By 1900 it was the largest denomination.
 * Parishes set up parochial schools, and over a hundred Jesuit and other colleges were established. Nuns were very active in teaching and hospital work.
 * Since 1960 the percentage of Americans who are Catholic has fallen slowly from about 25% to 22%. However, in absolute numbers, Catholics have increased from 45 million to 72 million. Source: Wikipedia

Information in Records

 * Baptism records: includes date of baptism and birth, parents names including the mother's maiden name, parish where the family is residing, legitimacy of the child, godparents names.
 * Confirmation records: in most cases about the age of 13 or 14, but also known to be at the age of 7.
 * Marriage records: includes date and place of marriage, names of the bride and groom, names of both sets of parents, including the mother's maiden name.
 * Death and Burial records: includes name of the deceased and date of death and burial. Often includes the names of surviving spouse or parents, cause of death and age at death.

Writing for Records
Records of most parishes are kept in the individual parishes. Records for defunct parishes are in diocese offices. See the Letter Writing Guide for Genealogy for help with composing letters.


 * The Roman Catholic Directory
 * Parishes online.com

For older North American church records kept by priests of the Order of the Holy Cross contact:


 * Holy Cross Provincial Archives P.O. Box 568 South Bend, IN 46556 Telephone: 219-631-5371
 * Website