A guide to obtaining church records:
GUIDE to the LOCATIONS OF RECORDS
If you DO know the name and location of your ancestors' Catholic Church/Parish, and it still exists:
A friendly and precise request, for baptism, marriage, or funeral records, sent to the church office, may provide you with the desired records.
Your letter should include details of your ancestor, such as: name, birthdate, marriage date, etc. (If dates are unknown, try to give a close estimate of the dates.)
Please keep in mind that the work of the Church is ongoing, parishes may vary greatly in their staffing, and records may or may not be indexed by surname, therefore it is advisable to limit your request to two or three specific records.
If you DO NOT know the name and location of your ancestors' Catholic Church/Parish, or it no longer exists:
You will need to determine the parish to which your ancestor belonged, and this may involve some HISTORICAL DETECTIVE work on your part.
Their parish will likely be the local Catholic Church nearest their home (geographically). However, as time passed, and the population of an area grew (or diminished), there was often a need to build new churches, and establish new dioceses and parishes. Therefore, your research may require combining church HISTORY with GENEALOGY.
Example:
You would like a copy of your great grandmother's 1890 baptism record, and a phone directory shows there is a St. Mary's Catholic Church near her childhood residence, however, you were informed her baptism record was not found at that parish.
A bit of HISTORICAL DETECTIVE work may show that St. Mary's was not established until 1970, so your next step may be to try to determine which parishes existed in the area in 1890. Resources for this may include Diocese, Church and Parish histories, City Directories, Atlases (of the necessary era), local county and town histories, 1890s newspapers, etc.
These resources may also help you overcome some apparent "brick walls" in your genealogy. I found a "missing" funeral record after I learned that the Church was destroyed by fire, and during the year-long rebuilding period, parishoners attended a neighboring parish.
Now, you are ready to BEGIN:
You may use this guide site to help you determine the name and address of the parish church.
1. Begin by Selecting the Country of your ancestor's residence.
For example, you may choose the United States.
2. Select the area within the Country nearest the geographic location of your ancestor's residence.
For example, choose the state of Indiana.
3. Select the Archdiocese or Diocese in location that is nearest your ancestor. Many of the Archdioceses and Dioceses have web sites online which include a directory of the parishes within their jurisdiction. Many have also posted histories online. In addition to helping you learn more about the events in the Catholic Churches of the area, these Histories may be critical to locating your ancestor's sacramental records, since new dioceses may have been established and jurisdictions may have changed many times through the years, as new countries formed or areas were settled.
For example, the geographic area of Fort Wayne, Indiana was once included in the ecclesiastical province of Quebec among others.
4. Some of the parishes have web sites of their own. If your parish of interest has a web site, do visit the site which may include addresses, histories, photos, etc. of interest to you.
*Notes:
If you find that the parish church no longer exists, it is possible that the records have been transferred to the archives of the Diocese where the church was located. The Archivist at the Diocese Chancery2 may be able to help you to locate records.
Areas were/are often served by priests from another Catholic Church while they were/are developing and becoming more populated. These are called missions. Records for these may be able to be located at the parish where the visiting priests are established.
Additionally, copies of records for sacraments received later in life, such as, marriage, may traditionally be sent to the church where the person was baptized as well.
http://home.att.net/%7ELocal_Catholic/#type-records
Hope this helps.....
wldspirit