Venezuela Church Records

Venezuela Church Records

How to begin in Family Search
You can search for ancestors by name in the FamilySearch indexes collections by clicking here. (You must click on the name and then click the link "All Record Collections.")

To find a family history center near you, click here.

There are also books in the Family History Library Salt Lake City. Click here. You can also check if a copy is located in a public library near you, or perhaps find it on interlibrary loan.

Published sources are still new for family history in Venezuela. Do not be discouraged if your family tree has not been published or if there is not a history of your area of interest.

To make other types of searches should read the instructions to search the Library Catalog Family History by clicking here.

Civil registration click here

Mérida, Catholic parish records 1654-1992 click here

Familysearch Indexing: Paths to helping each other
To assist you in locating your ancestors in Venezuela, we are preparing indexes of the Catholic church records in Mérida (1654-1992) Part 2, and Venezuela civil birth registrations (1873-1909.) This is an ongoing project which will be expanded to include more areas in Venezuela in the future.

You can volunteer to help index these records in only 30 minutes a week. Indexing allows these records to be more easily accessible around the world. To see a demonstration of how to begin, click here. To begin to help, click here. The project instructions for indexing Mérida Catholic Parish Records 1654-1992 Part 2, click here.

FamilySearch Indexing now available in 11 languages projects.

Recently completed projects will soon be available for search on FamilySearch.org include the records of the Czech Republic, Spain, Nicaragua and the United States. Other projects will be added as active volunteer population grows. To register or to find more information on Indexing, visit www.familysearch.org Tip: If you click on the underlined words in the instructions for each project, you can learn more details.

Parish Registers
Parish registers are the documents kept by the Catholic Church since the year 1654 and contain about books for registering church events: christenings, confirmations, marriages and deaths.

1550 to the present
Baptismal Registers: day, month, year, place (parish) where the baptism was performed, sex of the child, name(s); names and surnames of the parents and the godparents. Very rarely the names of grandparents are annotated or the place from where the ancestors originated.

Marriage Registers: name(s), surname(s), date of birth, place and date of marriage, residence, age of those nombre(s), age of the couple if it is a civil state, name(s) and surname(s) of the parents and sometimes of the grandparents.

Burial Registers: day and in which place the death occurred; name(s) and surname(s) of the deceased person, and the age and sex; name(s) and surname(s) of the parents and/or marital status (if the person is married or widowed); sometimes other types of information pertaining to the family or the character of the person.

Confirmation Registers: day and place of the event; name(s), surname(s) and age of the confirmed; name(s), surname(s) of the parents and/or godparent(s).

Location of the Registers
Each parish contains its own archive.

In the Family History Library catalog, look under "Venezuela, [PARISH NAME] - Church records" for microfilmed copies of the parish registers.

Online Church Records

 * 1577 - 1995 at | FamilySearch — index and images
 * 1654 - 2013 at | FamilySearch — index and images

A wiki article describing an online collection is found at:

Venezuela Catholic Church Records (FamilySearch Historical Records)