Church Records

Guide to locating church records for ancestry, family history, and genealogy research.

What are church records?

 * 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.
 * Eventually, countries and states of the U.S. started state keeping birth, marriage, and death certificates. Church records are extremely important before those records started.

Online Genealogical Records Pages
On the main page for each U.S. State page and country page, a blue button leads to a listing of online record collections.


 * Also, all the available Online Genealogy Records pages are linked at Online Genealogy Records by Location.

FamilySearch Catalog

 * Church Records collected by FamilySearch, usually digitized and online, are listed in the FamilySearch catalog. Enter the name of the country in the "Place Field" and click "Search". A list of record categories will be provided. Select "Census".