The Genealogical Value of Tracing the Historical Development of Religious Denominations: Part 2

     Many of today's religious denominations have gone through highly contentious time, with multiple mergers, splits, mutinies, power battles, excommunications, shunnings, relocations, etc. Each splinter group usually declared itself to be correct and the true church and took with it as many of the group's historical documents as it could.  Lawsuits over property and documents produced court records, another source of information about the groups and their leaders and members.

     Organizational records may include payroll information, property rental and purchase documents, tax records, employment records, records of disciplinary actions, chains of command and job descriptions.  In the case of religious groups all of the above will be included as well as records of the personal type (births, marriages, deaths, burials, consecrations, ordinations, etc) which we more commonly associate with genealogy.  

     When individuals shifted their allegiances from one religious group to another, their church-held vital genealogical records usually weren't shifted with them and stayed with the parent group.  The records may now be stored in the archives of the original body (which may or may not be in their original geographic location.

     If you know the dates when organizational shifts occurred, or the approximate dates when your ancestors moved from one group to another, you may be able to infer the likeliest place to begin searching for a particular record.  Early public records are often spotty and incomplete, or even totally lost due to floods, fires, or wartime rapacity.  The only official record of the marriage of your great-grandparents, who lived in California, may be located in church archives in Florida for a group which originated in Minnesota.