Chile Quick Start Guide

Chile Quick Start Guide

Chile: Ancestor's birth, marriage, or death location unknown
FamilySearch Indexed Records: Try searching in the indexed records for the name of the ancestor if they were born before 1900. Limit your results to the country of Chile and the name of the region if known. If there are no results, the patron will have to find more information from home sources or by asking family members.

Contact family members: If they do not have even a minimal of information AND have no idea of where and when to look, encourage them to contact family members who might have that information. This could be older aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc.

Chile: Ancestor's birth, marriage or death location and names of parents, children, or spouse are known
FamilySearch Indexed records: Try searching first in indexed records. Try a variety of searches with ancestor’s name, or with parents’ names, or just by parents’ surnames AND using the option to limit locality by country Chile and under event use ANY and the name of the state in Chile.

FamilySearch Browse Images: If there are no results from the previous search for the ancestor or any siblings, you will have to browse images for the locality. Civil Registration began in 1885 in Chile. Some of these records are available on microfilm. Please note that the indexes FamilySearch has online go beyond the year 1903 but the actual records filmed and-or digitized only go up to 1903. Catholic Church records are also a good choice as they cover all time periods. If you can find the ancestor in both record types, that is best as you will get more information to advance the pedigree.

Ordering copies of Civil Registration Records: If you have a RUN (Chilean national identification number you may order up to 5 certificates online for free. Please be aware that the site is in Spanish.

FamilySearch Catalog: Not all record for Chile are online, be sure to check the catalog before giving up on finding records.

Research strategies
Who to search for? If you don’t know the names of the parents, but you know the name of the spouse and/or the names of some of his children, begin with a marriage search (if they married in Chile and you know the place). Or begin with a search for the birth/baptism record for one of their children (if you have an approximate birth date and place).

Finding a locality

 * Google
 * Wikipedia (The Spanish version works the best)
 * FamilySearch Wiki article Chile Gazetteers
 * Try a keyword search in the FamilySearch Catalog for Chile Gazetteers.

Immigrant ancestor who went to Chile
FamilySearch Wiki: See the article Chile Emigration and Immigration for a list of websites you can csearch. They will be in Spanish and German. There are more resources on the FamilySearch Wiki in Spanish in the article Chile: Inmigración. The links between the English and Spanish versions of the articles can be found at the bottom of the page.

Online resources
For other online resources please review the Wiki article Hispanic Genealogy Resources Online.