Costa Rica Finding Records

Costa Rica Finding Records

To find church, civil or other records for your ancestor in Costa Rica using the FamilySearch catalog, you will need to know the various levels of jurisdictions (government or religious administrative divisions) in Costa Rica. Only three locality levels are noramally used. The country of Costa Rica is divided into provinces (provincias), municpalities (municipios), and cities, towns, villages, etc.

Province
Under the province level you will find civil registration records. You must know in which Province your ancestor was born in order to find civil registration records. In the FamilySearch Catalog you need to search at the province level in order to find the records.

Church
Church records are listed in the catalog under the city or town where the parish is located. A parish is an ecclesiastical jurisdiction where a Catholic priest serves and keeps records. The parish is usually named for a Saint and is located in the largest town in the parish jurisdiction. Large cities may have many parishes while a small town usually only has one.

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

Nicoya, Guanacaste, Costa Rica

City/town, State, 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 you locality field you would write it in the following manner:

Nuestra Señora del Pilar, Alajuela, Alajuela, Costa Rica

Parish, City/town, State, Country

The parish of Nuestra Señora del Pilar is located in the city of Alajuela.

To find your localities, see the following sources:

 * When searching for the jurisdictions of a town check the following source: by Félix F Noriega (San José, Costa Rica: Imprenta Naciona, 1923) FHL INTL Microfilm 1224518 Item 1.
 * Google Maps is a great place to figure out distances between towns.

To find your Catholic parish, see the following sources:
You can learn if your ancestor's town or city had an established parish by checking a Catholic Church directory. It will list the archidoicese 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 determine what parish he or she belonged to. However, in a large city such as San José, you may find that even if you know the closest parish, sometimes the family went to the cathedral or the parish or a relative in the same city for the baptism of a child. If you do not find the ccomplete 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 the FamilySearch catalog you will want to read Using the FamilySearch Catalog. To search the catalog, as well as indexed records and images available online from FamilySearch, you will need to visit. To find the record collections for Costa Rica, click on Central America and choose Costa Rica from the list. Finally click on Start researching in Costa Rica.