User:Hanna5974/sandbox/australia church

For information about records for non-Christian religions in Australia, go to the Religious Records page.

The Value of Church Records in Australia Family History

 * Church records are a valuable source for proving the dates and places of births, marriages, and deaths and the identity and relationships of family members.
 * They are particularly important prior to the start of each stategovernmentkeeping birth, marriage, and death certificates.

Prepare by Collecting Background Information
You will possibly find many different people with the same name as your ancestor, especially when a family stayed in a locality for several generations, and several children were named after the grandparents or aunts and uncles. Be prepared to find the correct church records by gathering in advance as many of these exact details about the ancestor as possible:
 * name, including middle name and maiden name
 * names of all spouses, including middle and maiden name
 * exact or closely estimated dates of birth, marriage, and death
 * names and approximate birthdates of children
 * all known places of residence
 * occupations
 * military service details

Carefully evaluate the church records you find to make sure you have really found records for your ancestor and not just a "near match". If one or more of the details do not line up, be careful about accepting the entry as your ancestor. There are guiding principles for deciding how to resolve discrepancies between records that are seemingly close. For more instruction in evaluating evidence, read the Wiki article, Evaluate the Evidence.

Where Did Your Ancestors Worship?
Knowing the denomination of your ancestor is an important part of church records research. Start by learning how to search a variety of records for clues to the denomination, locality, and possibly even the specific names of churches where your ancestors worshipped. Follow the tips in the Wiki article, Determining the Church Your Ancestor Attended. Although this article was written for United States research, the same tips hold true for Australia.

Where to Find Church Records in Australia
Some church records will be digitized and available online. Others may be deposited in
 * state, college, or ecclesiastical archives;
 * with historical or genealogical societies;
 * local libraries; or
 * still at the local church itself.

Civil Registration and Church Records

 * From 1788 to 1856 the only birth, death or marriage records kept in Australia were the registers maintained by the established churches. As registrar's offices assumed responsibility for registration, they requested copies of earlier church records to incorporate into their collections.

Searching for Church Records by Denomination
The links below for each denomination will take you to a Wiki articles with: 
 * Lists of online record collections
 * Descriptions of typical records for that denomination
 * Directories for addresses and instructions for writing to local ministers
 * Addresses for denomination archives, with
 * collection descriptions,
 * notes on services available,
 * finding aids, and
 * search engine links.

Searching for Church Records by State or Territory
These links will take you to Wiki articles for each state or territory, where you will find:
 * Lists of online record collections
 * Contact information, website links, collection descriptions, and services available for state, university, society, and local church archives within the state'''
 * A brief history of major religions in the state
 * Instructions and links to the FamilySearch Library catalog to search by locality for records

Historical Background

 * The Anglican Church of Australia, formerly known as the Church of England in Australia, is a Christian church in Australia and an autonomous church of the Anglican Communion.
 * Australian society was predominantly Anglo-Celtic, with 40% of the population being Anglican. It remained the largest Christian denomination until the 1986 census.
 * When the First Fleet was sent to New South Wales in 1787, Richard Johnson of the Church of England was licensed as chaplain to the fleet and the settlement.
 * In early Colonial times, the Church of England clergy worked closely with the governors. Richard Johnson, a chaplain, was charged by the governor, Arthur Phillip, with improving "public morality" in the colony, but he was also heavily involved in health and education.
 * Authorities were suspicious of Roman Catholicism for the first three decades of settlement and Roman Catholic convicts were compelled to attend Church of England services and their children and orphans were raised by the authorities as Anglicans.
 * The Church Act of 1836 established legal equality for Anglicans, Roman Catholics and Presbyterians and was later extended to Methodists.
 * The Australian Constitution of 1901 provided for freedom of religion.

Writing to Local Churches

 * ACC Find a Church

Historical Background

 * The Australian Christian Churches (ACC) is a network of Pentecostal churches in Australia affiliated with the World Assemblies of God Fellowship (AOG or AG), which is the largest pentecostal denomination.
 * In Australia, in 2007, the ACC had more than 375,000 adherents with more than 1,100 congregations across the country.
 * The ACC grew out of the Assemblies of God in Australia, which was founded in 1937 with the merger of Assemblies of God Queensland (AGQ) and the Pentecostal Church of Australia.
 * In 2007 it assumed Australian Christian Churches as its public name but remained the incorporated Assemblies of God in Australia until 2008.

Historical Background

 * The Catholic Church in Australia is part of the worldwide Catholic Church under the spiritual and administrative leadership of the Holy See. From origins as a suppressed, mainly Irish minority in early colonial times, the church has grown to be the largest Christian denomination in Australia, with a culturally diverse membership of around 5,439,268 people, representing about 23% of the overall population of Australia according to the 2016 census.
 * The permanent presence of Catholicism in Australia came rather with the arrival of the First Fleet of British convict ships at Sydney in 1788. One-tenth of all the convicts who came to Australia on the First Fleet were Catholic, and at least half of them were born in Ireland.A small proportion of British marines were also Catholic. Some of the Irish convicts had been transported to Australia for political crimes or social rebellion in Ireland, so the authorities were suspicious of Catholicism for the first three decades of settlement.
 * Catholic convicts were compelled to attend Church of England services and their children and orphans were raised by the authorities as Anglicans.
 * The absence of a Catholic mission in Australia before 1818 reflected the legal disabilities of Catholics in Britain and the difficult position of Ireland within the British Empire.
 * The Church Act of 1836 established legal equality for Anglicans, Catholics and Presbyterians and was later extended to Methodists.
 * Establishing themselves first at Sevenhill, in the newly established colony of South Australia in 1848, the Jesuits were the first religious order of priests to enter and establish houses in South Australia, Victoria, Queensland and the Northern Territory – Austrian Jesuits established themselves in the south and north and Irish in the east.
 * The goldrush saw an increase in the population and prosperity of the colonies. When gold was discovered in late 1851, there were an estimated 9,000 Catholics in the Colony of Victoria, increasing to 100,000 by the time the Jesuits arrived 14 years later.
 * While Austrian priests traversed the Outback on horseback to found missions and schools, the Irish priests arrived in the east in 1860.
 * Until about 1950, the Catholic Church in Australia was overwhelmingly Irish in its ethos. Most Catholics were descendants of Irish immigrants and the church was mostly led by Irish-born priests and bishops.
 * The Catholic Church also became involved in mission work among the Aboriginal people of Australia during the 19th century as Europeans came to control much of the continent.
 * From 1950 the ethnic composition of the church began to change, with the arrival of Eastern European Displaced Persons from 1948 and more than one million Catholics from countries such as Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, Germany, Croatia and Hungary, and later Filipinos, Vietnamese, Lebanese and Poles around the 1980s. There are now also strong Chinese, Korean and Latin American Catholic communities.

Historical Background

 * The Congregational Union of Australia was a Congregational denomination in Australia that stemmed from the Congregational Church in England as settlers migrated from there to Australia.
 * Congregational Churches existed in all states and territories of Australia at some time. The oldest Congregational Church was founded in Hobart in 1830 by Frederick Miller.
 * The Union dissolved in 1977 when the Uniting Church in Australia was formed. 260 of the congregations that had previously formed the Union joined the new Uniting Church. The Uniting Church union also included the Methodist Church of Australasia and the Presbyterian Church of Australia.
 * However, 40 other congregations that had previously formed the Union objected to joining the new Uniting Church and formed the Fellowship of Congregational Churches instead.
 * In 1995, there was a split within that Fellowship, with some more ecumenically-minded congregations leaving to form the Congregational Federation of Australia.

Historical Background

 * The Methodist Church of Australasia was a Methodist denomination based in Australia.
 * On 1 January 1902, five Methodist denominations in Australia – the Wesleyan Methodist Church, the Primitive Methodists, the Bible Christian Church, the United Methodist Free and the Methodist New Connexion Churches came together to found a new church. In polity it largely followed the Wesleyan Methodist Church.
 * The church ceased to exist in 1977, when most of its congregations joined with the many congregations of the Congregational Union of Australia and the Presbyterian Church of Australia to form the Uniting Church in Australia.
 * There are still independent Methodist congregations in Australia, including congregations formed or impacted by Tongan immigrants.
 * The Wesleyan Methodist Church of Australia is derived from the Wesleyan Methodist Church of America and did not join the Uniting Church in Australia.

Historical Background

 * Presbyterian Christianity came to Australia with the arrival of members from a number of Presbyterian denominations in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century. The Presbyterian missionaries played an important role to spread the faith in Australia. Since then Presbyterianism grew to the fourth largest Christian faith in the country.
 * The Presbyterian Church of Australia was formed when Presbyterian churches from various Australian states federated in 1901. The churches that formed the Presbyterian Church of Australia were the Presbyterian Churches of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and Western Australia. These state churches were (and still are) incorporated by separate Acts of Parliament.
 * In 1977. two-thirds of the Presbyterian Church of Australia, together with nearly all the membership of the Congregational Union of Australia and the Methodist Church of Australasia, joined to form the Uniting Church in Australia. The current iteration of the PCA is made up of the one-third of 1977 churches that did not join.
 * The Presbyterian Church of Australia's official website has stated that the church has over 50,000 adults and children within 740 congregations with more than 600 ministers, deaconesses and theological students. At the last Commonwealth Census (2016) nearly 540,000 people identified as Presbyterian/Reformed, representing 2.3% of the population. This makes Presbyterianism Australia's fifth largest Christian denomination, although not all Presbyterians are members of the Presbyterian Church of Australia.
 * See also List of Presbyterian and Reformed denominations in Australia for various independent Presbyterian churches not affiliated with the PCA or the Uniting Church.

Historical Background
The LDS Church was introduced into Australia when William Barratt emigrated from England to Adelaide in November 1840.[4] At the age of seventeen, Barratt had been ordained an elder by George A. Smith, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, who instructed him to proselyte whenever he could.[5] Although the success of Barratt's proselyting efforts remains largely unknown,[6] he did baptise Robert Beauchamp in 1842, who became the first Australia convert.[7][8] Beauchamp would later become an Australian mission president.[9] The next missionary in Australia was Andrew Anderson who arrived with his family in 1842. By the end of 1844, Anderson had organised a small branch of the LDS Church with 11 members near Wellington, New South Wales.[9][10] Official LDS missionary work did not begin until Americans John Murdock, who served as mission president, and Charles W. Wandell established a mission in Sydney on 31 October 1851.[9][11] They printed 2,000 copies of Proclamation to the People of the Coasts and Islands of the Pacific, which they successfully sold.[6] They exerted their time and resources to proselyte using pamphlets and printed many others.[12] It was calculated that Wandell and Murdock had distributed 24,000 tracts.[12] Their initial proselyting strategy was preaching in public meetings, but they soon acquired a meeting hall. The earliest converts at the official opening of the mission were in December 1851. They included Emily and Joseph Popplewells, Bridget Gallimore, and nine others.[13] The Sydney Branch, a small organised congregation of Latter-day Saints, was organised on 4 January 1852 with twelve members.[12] By March, there were 36 members.[14] Murdock and Wandell directed three church meetings each Sunday as well as five public proselyting meetings per week.[14] After Murdock returned to the United States in June 1852, Wandell replaced him as mission president.[14]

By the end of 1852, there were 47 members of the LDS Church.[9] Wandell reported that missionary work was difficult because the recent gold rush had caused people to be suspicious about strangers. Additionally, Wandell reported that the locals disliked Americans and the missionaries could not locate free food and lodging. However, the missionaries hosted well-attended church meetings every Sunday and proselyted five days a week.[15] In 1852, there were five missionaries and two local members performing full-time missionary service and Maitland and Melbourne areas were opened for proselyting.[15] By March 1853, church membership had reached 100.[14] After the departure of Wandell, John Jones became mission president.[15] Upon Wandell's departure, a Latter-day Saint periodical called Zion's Watchman was in publication from 13 August 1853 until April 1856.[12] Despite the growth of the church in Australia, numbers of its members in the country dwindled. This was because the early LDS Church encouraged emigration to the United States to gather members together into a physical "Zion". Consequently, groups of LDS Church members began to leave Australia.[16] From 1853 to 1859, more than 500 LDS Church members emigrated to Utah and around 200 to 300 members emigrated from 1859 to 1900.[17] It was expensive and dangerous to travel to the United States from Australia by boat. When the boat Julia Ann hit a coral reef in the Society Islands in 1855, two women and three children drowned.[18]

More missionaries arrived in 1853, with Augustus Farnham replacing Jones as mission president.[9][19] In 1854, missionary work was organised in New Zealand and Tasmania, leading to the creation of the Australasian Mission which included all of the territories in Australia and New Zealand.[20][21] Missionary work was opened in Hunter River, Moreton Bay in Queensland, and Adelaide. At this time, missionaries experienced the greatest amount of success in southeastern Australia.[14] Robert Owen initiated missionary work in Tasmania, but it was unsuccessful.[22] By 1856, all missionaries had left Australia with church members emigrating to the United States. Absolom Dowdle became the new mission president. By the end of 1856, 16 missionaries had replaced the missionaries that left Australia.[22] In 1858, due to the Utah War, missionaries left Australia to return home and fight in the war, leaving the local members in charge of ecclesiastical leadership of the small, church congregations. However, it did not last, and by 1863, leadership had been largely disbanded with the only 200 church members remaining in Australia, scattered across the country.[23] Robert Beauchamp assumed the position of mission president in 1867, but the church was left in disarray when he resigned in 1874.[23] During the first 18 months of Beauchamp's presidency, there had been over 150 baptisms.[24] After Beauchamp resigned, William Geddes became mission president for a year.[23] Elijah F. Peace became president of the Australasian Mission in 1879, moving headquarters to New Zealand.[23]

1880–1954: Mission division and slow growth Beginning in 1857, missionary work in Australia was determined unsuccessful and the focus was turned to New Zealand. However, on 1 January 1898, the Australasian Mission was divided into the Australian Mission and the New Zealand Mission, allowing for more effort to be put into missionary work in Australia.[9] Previously, from the 1860s until 1898, church leaders in Utah gave Australia little attention and missionary work was not contiguous. There were three or four operating branches in Australia between 1879 and 1898.[25] Andrew Smith was appointed the president of the new Australian mission.[26] In 1890, the first converts were baptised in Brisbane and the East Brisbane Branch, the first branch in Brisbane, was organised on 1 September 1896. By 1898, it was not only the branch with the most complete leadership and organisation but also the largest in the country, with 79 members.[27] By 1898, there were around 200 members in Australia and 21 missionaries in 1900.[9][28] Because the LDS Church began encouraging church members to stay in their homelands rather than emigrate, church membership from 1910 to 1925 doubled from 600 to 1,169.[17]

The first LDS chapel building in Australia was established in 1904 in Brisbane.[9] During the first quarter of the century, growth in the LDS Church in Australia was slow.[29] Despite the fact that the LDS Church reversed its emigration policy at the turn of the century, the policy remained culturally ingrained in the LDS Church for some time. Consequently, from 1900 to about 1925, around 15 church members emigrated from Australia each year.[30] While missionary work in Australia was successful, there were too few missionaries in the country. Between 1910 and 1925, there was an average of 31 missionaries in the country.[30] Generally, there were only four missionaries per district in Australia, and the vastness of the country made it difficult to travel from one side to another for conferences and visits with the mission president.[31] Additionally, proselyting methods were underdeveloped with outdated teaching plans and the lack of challenges for interested individuals.[32] Some missionaries believed that their most effective proselyting tool at the time was street meetings.[32] Tracting was ineffective, and the Book of Mormon was rarely used as a proselyting tool.[33] Moreover, due to World War I pulling men away from home to serve in the war, local congregations were left without sufficient leadership.[17] Furthermore, the war caused the number of missionaries in Australia to be divided nearly in half.[17]

Despite issues with circulating anti-Mormon literature, by 1923 the LDS Church was officially declared a "religious denomination" in Australia. In 1924, the Australian government allowed the LDS Church to raise the number of missionaries to 40.[34] By 1925, church membership in Australia was around 1,200, with the largest congregation being in Sydney, consisting of about 300 members.[35] Charles H. Hyde served as mission president from 1911 to 1913 and 1924 to 1928. During his second term, he sought to open new mission areas but found himself limited by the number of missionaries in the country.[36]

Clarence H. Tingey succeeded Hyde as mission president, but during his presidency the number of missionaries in Australia declined due to the Great Depression in the United States. Sons and fathers were unable to leave their families during the difficult financial times.[37] Despite these challenges, Tingey achieved great success by turning over leadership in individual congregations from missionaries to local members, which allowed missionaries to focus on proselyting rather than the administrative duties of local congregations.[37] Moreover, Tingey developed a personal relationship with each missionary by exchanging letters and instituted fast days in order to distribute more copies of the Book of Mormon.[37] He also established a missionary publication in 1930 called Austral Star, which was published until 1955.[38] In 1930, Horace H. Woodford and J. Kenneth Rule were the first Australians to serve as missionaries in their country.[39] Additionally, Tingey created genealogical organisations in 1931 to teach members about temple work and genealogical research. During this time, the average number of converts increased to 3.1 in 1931 with an average rate of 2.6 between 1933 and 1934. He also assigned 11 local members to serve two-year part-time missions to aid the full-time missionaries.[40] From 1926 to 1951, church membership increased from 1,169 to 2,187 with an average of 58 baptisms per year.[36]

Following World War I and the Great Depression, church membership in Australia increased.[17] Missionary presence in Australia from 1935 to 1940 was the highest in the history of the LDS church in Australia.[17] However, with the beginning of World War II, president of the LDS Church Heber J. Grant instructed all missionaries to return home, requiring church leadership positions that were previously held by missionaries to be held by local church members.[41] However, this was difficult because many of the Australian church members were joining the Australian Army. The church in Australia did not recover in time for the Korean War. Historian Geoffrey Blainey argued that the factors that contributed to the slow growth of the LDS Church in Australia during the twentieth century were due to war, small missionary forces, and the vastness of the country.[42] During World War II, the women in the Relief Societies in Australia volunteered for the Australian Red Cross to provide aid during the war.[43]

Writing to Local Churches
Lutheran Archives 27 Fourth Street Bowden SA 5007 Australia E-mail: lutheran.archives@lca.org.au Telephone: 08 8340 4009
 * Lutheran Archives
 * Genealogy and Family Research: The parish registers contain information on births, baptisms, confirmations, marriages, deaths and burials of people who were associated with the Lutheran Church. These are extremely valuable for family history research. To assist researchers a Church Records Computer Database Index has been prepared. A printout of the surname provides the researcher with an index to entries with that surname in the parish registers. This enables the researcher to quickly locate those records which may be useful. There is an additional charge for this service.
 * Computer printout of surnames in church records database: $5 per surname searched, plus $1 per page
 * Transcription of church register records: $6 per record (e.g. baptism record)

Historical Background

 * The first Lutherans to come to Australia in any significant number were the immigrants from Prussia, who arrived in 1838 with Pastor August Kavel. This period in Prussia was marked by a persecution of "Old Lutherans" who refused to join the Prussian Union under King Frederick Wilhelm.
 * In 1841, a second wave of Prussian immigrants started, with the arrival of Pastor Gotthard Fritzsche. He settled with the migrants in his group in Lobethal and Bethanien (now Bethany) in South Australia. The Lutheran church of this period is referred to as the Kavel-Fritzsche Synod.
 * A split occurred within the South Australian Lutheran community in 1846, and two separate synods were established. The followers of Kavel founded the Langmeil-Light Pass Synod, and those of Fritzsche the Bethany-Lobethal Synod.
 * These two groups came eventually to be named the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Australia, which derived from the Bethany-Lobethal Synod, and the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Australia which was of the Langmeil-Light Pass Synod, and a number of other synods that had developed. These two denominations joined to form the Lutheran Church of Australia in 1966.
 * A significant influx occurred after World War II and migration also brought a number of Lutherans from other European countries.
 * As of 2009, the church had 320 parishes, 540 congregations and 70,000 baptised members in Australia and 1,130 baptized members in New Zealand.

Archives
There are six Synods in Australia:
 * New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory
 * Northern Synod
 * Queensland
 * South Australia
 * Victoria and Tasmania: Synod Archives
 * Western Australia

Historical Background

 * The UCA is Australia's third-largest Christian denomination, behind the Catholic and the Anglican Churches. The Uniting Church in Australia (UCA) was founded on 22 June 1977, when these churches united:
 * most congregations of the Methodist Church of Australasia,
 * about two-thirds of the Presbyterian Church of Australia and
 * almost all the churches of the Congregational Union of Australia.


 * According to the church, it had 243,000 members in 2018. In the 2016 census, about 870,200 Australians identified with the church; in the 2011 census, the figure was 1,065,796.
 * There are around 2,000 UCA congregations.

Historical Background
The beginnings of the current Wesleyan Methodist Church in Australia may be traced to 1945, when the Rev. Dr. Kingsley Ridgway offered himself as a Melbourne based "field representative" for a possible Australian branch of the Wesleyan Methodist Church of America, after meeting an American serviceman who was a member of that denomination.[1]

Kingsley Ridgway's legacy continued to be felt in the church, with his son, the Rev. Dr. James Ridgway, providing denominational and institutional leadership over many years, and grandson the Rev. Kent Ridgway serving as Southern District Superintendent.

Contrary to a popular assumption, it is not a "continuing Methodist Church," formed as a result of the merger in 1977 of Congregationalist, Methodist and Presbyterian congregations to form the Uniting Church in Australia. It was never a part of the merger negotiations with those bodies that formed the Uniting Church, though some members and ministers, unhappy with the Basis of Union, switched allegiance to this organisation.[citation needed]

Recent times The Wesleyan Methodist Church of Australia saw increased growth in the 1980s, particularly in Queensland[citation needed], much of this as a result of the church planting strategies of the Rev. Don Hardgrave[citation needed], who also wrote the only denominational history of the church.[2] As well as aiming at new convert growth, Wesleyan Methodists have welcomed into their membership those seeking an alternative to more liberal Protestant denominations, as well as Pentecostals looking for a church more grounded in historic Christianity. The 45th National Conference held in January 2004 reported 77 local churches, 96 ordained ministers, 2017 members and an average main Sunday service attendance of 3702 persons.

From the late 1990s, the Australian church has fostered and encouraged the emergence of Wesleyan Methodist churches in New Zealand, the Solomon Islands, and Bougainville, Papua New Guinea.

At the 2008 South Pacific Convention and National Conference held at Philip Island, Victoria, a new National Superintendent was appointed, Rev. Lindsay Cameron. Lindsay brought to the position a desire to see the denomination strengthened through the upholding and proclamation of the uniqueness of Wesleyan doctrinal teaching.

The 2012 National Conference elected the Rev. Rex Rigby to the position of National Superintendent. He is the denomination's first indigenous leader.

There are 54 congregations currently listed on the denominational website.

Information Recorded in Church Records
The information recorded in church or parish registers varies somewhat from religion to religion, and later records generally give more complete information than earlier ones. Most church registers for the Anglican, Catholic, and Presbyterian denominations provide the following information:

Baptisms

 * Birth and baptism dates
 * Place of baptism
 * Christian name of the child
 * Christian and surname of the father
 * Christian name of the mother (some include maiden surname)
 * Parents’ abode
 * Occupation of the father
 * Name of the officiating minister

Children were generally baptized within a few days of birth. If a child died soon after birth, death information was sometimes added as a note.

Marriages

 * Date and place of marriage
 * Full names of the bride and groom
 * Parish of residence of the bride and groom
 * Marital status of the bride and groom prior to this marriage
 * Married by banns or license
 * In the case of a minor, whether with consent of parents
 * Name of the officiating minister
 * Signatures or marks of the bride and groom
 * Signatures or marks of witnesses

Marriage registers may also include other information about the bride and groom such as their ages, occupations, and names of parents. In cases of second and later marriages for a woman, they may include her former married names along with her maiden name.

Marriage registers sometimes include the published banns. These were announcements of intent to marry which were made for two or three Sundays prior to the marriage, and gave an opportunity for anyone to come forward who knew of any reason why the couple should not be married.

Burials

 * Dates of death and burial
 * Place of burial
 * Name of the deceased
 * Place of abode at time of death
 * Age of the deceased
 * Occupation of the deceased
 * Name of the officiating minister

Occasionally parents' names, cause of death, and even the date and place of birth are given for the deceased. Burials were recorded in the records of the church where the person was buried. The burial usually took place within a few days of death. Burial records exist for individuals for whom no birth or marriage record exists. In addition, stillbirths may have been recorded in a burial register when no baptism occurred.