Copenhagen: Finding a Place of Residence

Denmark Copenhagen  Finding a Place of Residence

Probably the most important piece of information needed in order to research a family or individual in Copenhagen is where exactly the family lived. Knowing the street address in Copenhagen determines what record juridictions the family/individual can be found in, saving research time and energy.

Step 1: What do I know?
The first step in finding your family in Copenhagen is determining what is already known. Ask yourself the following questions:


 * 1) Do I already know an address for the family?
 * 2) Do I have letters from the family that indicate an address?
 * 3) Are there secondary sources (such as Family Trees and Biographies) that could have an address, or at least a specific parish in the city?

If you do find an address among your family records, or other easily available sources, you can skip to Step 3. However, it is adviseable to verify the information you have found in Step 1 by following the tips in Step 2.

Step 2: What records can I search?
If you could not find an address for the family/individual in Step 1, or if you merely wish to verify what you found, the next step is understanding what records can tell you where they were living. The best records for finding an address in Copenhagen are:


 * 1) Census Records: Censuses are some of the best records for finding an address. Most of Copenhagen is indexed online at Dansk Demografisk Database.
 * 2) Police Census Records: A special census taken in Copenhagen by the police twice a year.
 * 3) Directories: Directories are some of the oldest records that list a person's place of residence in Copenhagen.
 * 4) Church Records: Many times, a birth record, marriage record, or death record will list where the individual was residing when the record was made. It is adviseable to only search church records if a parish of residence is already known.
 * 5) Civil Registration: Like the church records, civil registration will usually list where the individual was residing when the record was made.

If you cannot find a family's place of residence, you may need to begin searching parish to parish for the family. See the strategies under Step 4.

Step 3: What jurisdictions does the address belong to?
Once you have found the family's/individual's address in Copenhagen, the next step is to determine what jurisdictions the street belonged to. The jurisdictions will determine where you look to find the vital records concerning your family. The following tools will help you determine the jurisdictions:


 * 1) Copenhagen Parish List: A list of the parishes of Copenhagen, when they were formed, and what parish(es) they were formed from.
 * 2) Copenhagen Street-Parish-Police District index: an index that states the parish and police district that each street belonged to.

Step 4: What's next?
After you have determined the jurisdictions the family lived in, you can begin to search for other records.