El Salvador Finding Records

El Salvador Finding Records

To find church, civil or other records for your ancestor in El Salvador using the FamilySearch Catalog, you will need to know the various levels of jurisdictions (government or religious administrative divisions) in El Salvador. Only three locality levels are normally used. The country of El Salvador is divided into departments (departamentos), municipalities (municipios), and cities, towns, villages, etc.

Municipality
Under the municipality or municipio levei, you will find civil registration records. A municipality covers an area that may contain several towns and is usually located in the largest one. A large city may contain several municipalities. You will need to determine the correct municipality in order to locate the civil registration records. In Family Search, the Civil Registration Records will be located under the name of the municipality.

Church
Catholic Church records are listed by city or town and then by parish. A parish is an ecclesiastical jurisdiction and is usually named for a Saint. A parish covers an area that may contain several towns and is usually located in the largest one. A Large city may contain several parishes. In Family Search, the Catholic Church Records have not been indexed. So you will want to figure out the correct parish before beginning your search.

Place Levels (Jurisdictions)
Places are usually written from smallest to largest on a family group records

Arcatao, Chalatenango, El Salvador

City/town, Department, Country

when writing the localities on your family group sheet, the municipio is not listed.

When you want to include the parish, which is especially important in large cities, in your locality field you would write it in the following manner:

San Juan Bautista, Cojutepeque, Cuscatlán, El Salvador

Parish, City/town, Department, Country

The parish of San Juan Bautista is located in the city of Cojutepeque.

To find your localisties, see the following sources:

 * The Spanish version of Wikipedia
 * Google Maps is a great place to find towns and figure out distances between towns.

To find your Catholic parish, see the following sources:
You can learn if your ancesto'rs town or city had an established parish by checking a Catholic Church directory. It will list the archdiocese officials and the dioceses with their parishes, so you can easily determine all nearby parishes. It may include historical information about each parish, and sometimes it provides addresses for parishes, the diocese headquarters, and the diocese archives where additional records may be kept.

If your ancestor came from a large city that had several parishes, you will need to know what section of the city he or she lived in order to determin what parish he or she belonged to. However, in a large city suc as San Salvador, you may find that even if you know the closest parish, sometimes the family went to the cathedral or the parish of a relative in the same city for the baptism of a child. If you do not find the complete family in the home parish, search the surrounding parishes of the city.

If your family lived in a very small village that did not have an established parish, you will need to check a map, church directory, or gazetteer to determine which nearby town had a parish.

Records from FamilySearch
Once you have identified the name and jurisdiction of the town of your ancestors you will want to check the FamilySearch Catalog and FamilySearch Record Collections for records about your ancestors. For more information about how to search for the FamilySearch catalog you will want to read Using the FamilySearch Catalog.

To search the catalog, as well as indexed records and image available online from FamilySearch, you will need to visit FamilySearch.org. To find the record collections for El Salvador, click on Central American and choose El Salvador from the list. Finally, click on Start researching in Venezuela.

See also El Salvador Quick Start Guide