Missouri Church Records

Roman Catholic churches were established in Missouri in the colonial era. Records for St. Louis, for example, date from 1765. Many other denominations came after 1800 with the arrival of various immigrant groups. By 1900 the largest religious groups in Missouri were the Roman Catholic, Baptist, Christian (Disciples of Christ), and Methodist Episcopal (now United Methodist).

The Family History Library has some collections of church records for Missouri, including Catholic, Baptist, and Presbyterian records. These include a unique collection of 13 films of alphabetized parish register transcripts from the Catholic Archdiocese of Kansas City for the years 1830 to 1900.

For information on church records see Guide to Vital Statistics: Church Records in Missouri (Washington, DC: Historical Records Survey, 1942; not at Family History Library) at the Library of Congress.

Many denominations have collected their records into central repositories. You can write to the following for more information about their records.

Baptist
Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives 901 Commerce Street, Suite 400 Nashville, TN 37203-3630 Telephone: 615-244-0344 Fax: 615-782-4821 Internet: http://www.sbhla.org/

Missouri Baptist Historical Commission William Jewell College 500 College Hill Liberty, MO 64068 Telephone: 816-781-7700 ext.5468 Fax: 816-415-5027 Internet: http://www.sbuniv.edu/library/uarchive/mobapt.htm

American Baptist Historical Society 1106 South Goodman Street Rochester, NY 14620-2532 Telephone: 716-473-1740 Internet: http://www.baptisthistory.us/

An inventory of some Missouri Baptist records at the American Baptist Historical Society is Records of American Baptists in Missouri and Related Organizations (Rochester, New York: American Baptist Historical Society, 1982).

Christian
Disciples of Christ Historical Society 1101 19th Avenue S Nashville, TN 37212-2196 Telephone: 615-327-1444 Fax: 615-327-1445 Internet: http://www.disciples.org/congregations/websites/index.asp

Methodist
United Methodist Archives Central Methodist College Library 411 Central Methodist Square Fayette, MO 65248 Telephone: 816-248-3391 ext. 292 Fax: 816-248-3045 Internet: http://www.gcah.org/

Centenary United Methodist Church 55 Plaza Square 16th &amp; Pine Street St Louis, MO 63103 Telephone: 314-421-3136 Fax: 314-421-4625 Internet: http://www.labyrinth-enterprises.com/Gcentenary.pdf

Commission on Archives and History United Methodist Church P.O. Box 127 36 Madison Avenue Madison, NJ 07940 Telephone: 201-408-3590 Fax: 201-408-3909 Internet: http://www.gcah.org/

A useful history is Richard A. Seaton, History of the United Methodist Churches of Missouri(Missouri Methodist Historical Society, 1984; Family History Library book 977.8 K2hs).

Roman Catholic
THE DROUIN COLLECTION:

Drouin Collection 1621-1967 at Ancestry.ca. When searching these databases, be creative in the spellings as well as the various focuses in searching for an ancestor. The French language has many possible spellings for a name, as well as there are errors in the indexing.

This French-Canadian collection has over 15 million genealogical and vital records entries; they were microfilmed by the Institut Généalogique Drouin. In Quebec, under the French Regime, there were two sets of records kept: a copy for the civil government archives and a copy for the ecclesiastical church archives. The Drouin collection is a civil copy of these entries. Please note that the cutoff date of this collection is in the early 1940s; only a small percentage of entries were covered from 1948 to 1967.

This collection is divided into six databases: 1. Quebec Vital and Church Records, 1621-1967 2. Ontario French Catholic Church Records, 1747-1967, 3. Early U.S. French Catholic Church Records, 1695-1954, 4. Acadia French Catholic Church Records, 1670-1946, 5. Quebec Notarial Records, 1647-1942, and 6. Miscellaneous French Records, 1651-1941. For details about these six databases, see "The Drouin Collection: Six Databases" at https://wiki.familysearch.org/en/The_Drouin_Collection:_Six_databases.

Early U.S. French Catholic Church Records, 1695-1954: This database only contains the French Catholic parish records from the United States; in the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New York, and Pennsylvania. The types of records include baptisms, marriages, and burials as well as confirmations, dispensations, censuses, statements of readmission to the church, and so on. They are written mainly in French, as well as English, Latin, and Italian.

Archives of the Archdiocese of St. Louis 4445 Lindell Boulevard St. Louis, MO 63108-2497 Telephone: 314-533-1887 Fax: 314-533-1889 Internet: http://www.archstl.org/