April 11, 2025
Church records often contain information found nowhere else. Births, marriages and death dates are usually found in these records. Church records are also some of the earliest records available for an area.
Despite their value, church records (at least for U.S. research) are underutilized. There are a variety of reasons for this. Until recently, very few church records were digitized. Using the records often required a trip to an archive or other repositor. A visit might entail a journey to the other side of the country.
Another reason that church records are underutilized is that researchers don’t know what denomination their ancestors belonged to. Countries in Europe and elsewhere in the world often had a state religion. Everyone was required to belong to that church. That makes finding an ancestor’s church records in those countries much easier. Just look for the records for the parish in which he/she lived.
In the United States, it’s not as easy. Here there are hundreds of different denominations, both large and small. Most researchers probably know what church their parents and grandparents attended. Beyond that, they may assume that their ancestors attended the same denomination, but that assumption may not be valid.
When I was a beginning genealogist, I decided to research my husband’s New Jersey family. According to my in-laws, their families had been in South New Jersey for generations. On one of our family visits to New Jersey, my mother-in-law offered to take me to the cemeteries in the area to show me ancestral graves.
As we drove from one cemetery to the next, she pointed out a small church near one of the cemeteries. She explained that the church was built in the 1700s and was a Quaker Meeting House.
I knew enough about genealogy to have heard that Quaker church records were great genealogical resources. I asked my mother-in-law if she or my father-in-law had any Quaker ancestors. She quickly replied, “Oh, no, all of our ancestors were Methodists!”
Since I was a new genealogist at the time, I didn’t ask any more questions. I assumed my mother-in-law knew what she was talking about and didn’t think any more about Quaker records. I didn’t have much time for genealogy at the time and decided to concentrate on my own lines. My husband’s line could wait.
Fifteen or so years later, it was finally time to return to my husband’s New Jersey roots. I had done more historical research over the intervening years and knew more about the history of the area where my husband grew up. His childhood home was just across the river from Philadelphia. As anyone who has taken high school U.S. history knows, Philadelphia was founded by William Penn as a Quaker colony. The part of New Jersey my husband is from was heavily settled by Quakers.
It seemed unlikely to me that my husband’s family had lived in that area for hundreds of years, but none of them were Quakers.
By then, Quaker records were online and easily accessible. It didn’t take long to discover that my husband’s family names were found throughout them. Instead of having no Quaker ancestors, most of my husband’s New Jersey ancestors had been Quakers.
My mother-in-law didn’t know of her Quaker ancestors because, like most non-genealogists, she only knew her ancestors as far back as her great grandparents. Over the generations, her ancestors had left the Quakers and had become Methodists. Her Quaker roots had been lost.
Over generations church affiliation often changes in a family. The family soon assumes that the religion of today was always the family religion. In many cases, that’s not true.
Carol Stetser
Researcher
Larimer County Genealogical Society