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

Societies

 * The Society of Australian Genealogists, based in Sydney, provides an expert and specialist family history service, and holds microfilms of records of churches of all denominations throughout Australia and overseas. The SAG sells copies of their microfilms to family history societies, historical societies, and libraries.

Writing to Local Churches
Birth, marriage, and death registers are kept at the current individual churches. Contact the current minister to find out what records are still available.
 * Make an appointment to look at the records. Or ask the minister of the church to make a copy of the record for you.
 * To find church staff available, you might have to visit on Sunday.
 * Ask for small searches at a time, such as one birth record or a specific marriage. Never ask for "everything on a family or surname".
 * A donation ($25-$40) for their time and effort to help you would be appropriate.
 * If the church has a website, you may be able to e-mail a message.
 * See the Letter Writing Guide for Genealogy for help with composing letters.

Historical Background

 * Australian Baptist Ministries (formerly Baptist Union of Australia) is the oldest and largest national cooperative body of Baptists in Australia. The Baptist Union of Australia was inaugurated on 24 August 1926 at the Burton Street Church in Sydney. It is affiliated with the Baptist World Alliance.
 * Baptist work in Australia began in Sydney in 1831, forty-three years after the British penal colony was established.
 * The first preacher was John McKaeg, who conducted the first Baptist service on Sunday 24 April in The Rose and Crown Inn on the corner of Castlereagh and King Streets.
 * It was not until 1835 that the first church was established in Hobart Town by Henry Dowling, a strict Calvinist. *John Saunders, who had been sent by the Baptist Missionary Society of England to Sydney in 1834, raised the funding to erect a second church which was opened on 23 September 1836.
 * The first state Union was formed in Victoria in 1862.
 * The national Baptist Union was founded in 1926 by representatives from existing state unions.
 * According to a denomination census released in 2020, it claimed 1,021 churches and 76,046 members.
 * State ministries are named:
 * Baptist Churches Western Australia
 * Baptist Union of Victoria
 * Tasmanian Baptists
 * Baptist Churches South Australia
 * Queensland Baptists
 * Baptist Association New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory
 * Baptist Union of the Northern Territory

Societies

 * The Society of Australian Genealogists, based in Sydney, provides an expert and specialist family history service, and holds microfilms of records of churches of all denominations throughout Australia and overseas. The SAG sells copies of their microfilms to family history societies, historical societies, and libraries.

Writing to Local Churches
Birth, marriage, and death registers are kept at the current individual churches. Contact the current minister to find out what records are still available.
 * Make an appointment to look at the records. Or ask the minister of the church to make a copy of the record for you.
 * To find church staff available, you might have to visit on Sunday.
 * Ask for small searches at a time, such as one birth record or a specific marriage. Never ask for "everything on a family or surname".
 * A donation ($25-$40) for their time and effort to help you would be appropriate.
 * If the church has a website, you may be able to e-mail a message.
 * See the Letter Writing Guide for Genealogy for help with composing letters.

Historical Background

 * Andrew Anderson, who arrived with his family in 1842 organized a small branch of the LDS Church with 11 members near Wellington, New South Wales.
 * Official LDS missionary work did not begin until Americans John Murdock and Charles W. Wandell established a mission in Sydney on 31 October 1851. By the end of 1852, there were 47 members of the LDS Church.
 * In 1852, Maitland and Melbourne areas were opened for proselyting.
 * Despite the growth of the church in Australia, numbers of its members in the country dwindled because the early LDS Church encouraged emigration to the United States.
 * 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.
 * By 1898, there were around 200 members in Australia and 21 missionaries in 1900. 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.
 * By 1923, the LDS Church was officially declared a "religious denomination" in Australia.
 * From 1926 to 1951, church membership increased from 1,169 to 2,187.

Societies

 * The Society of Australian Genealogists, based in Sydney, provides an expert and specialist family history service, and holds microfilms of records of churches of all denominations throughout Australia and overseas. The SAG sells copies of their microfilms to family history societies, historical societies, and libraries.

Writing to Local Churches
Birth, marriage, and death registers are kept at the current individual churches.' Contact the current minister to find out what records are still available.
 * Make an appointment to look at the records. Or ask the minister of the church to make a copy of the record for you.
 * To find church staff available, you might have to visit on Sunday.
 * Ask for small searches at a time, such as one birth record or a specific marriage. Never ask for "everything on a family or surname".
 * A donation ($25-$40) for their time and effort to help you would be appropriate.
 * If the church has a website, you may be able to e-mail a message.
 * See the Letter Writing Guide for Genealogy for help with composing letters.

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.
 * It was never a part of the merger negotiations that formed the Uniting Church.
 * The Wesleyan Methodist Church of Australia saw increased growth by the 1980s, particularly in Queensland.
 * 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.