Tracing Your Ancestors in Church or Synagogue Records

The Mormons do genealogical work as part of their religious activities called Temple Work. The concept a non-Mormon would most readily recognize is "baptism for the dead" which is mentioned in  1 Corinthians 15:29. What "baptism for the dead" might actually mean is not an object of discussion in this particular post.

It is not necessary for you to be a Mormon to be interested in your family history. Your ancestry is a large part of who you are. It is your link to history. You love your parents. Why not also learn of and love your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents?

There are many techniques genealogists use to trace family relationships. One of them is studying church and synagogue records. These are as much primary source records as are public civil records.

Jewish genealogy seems to present particular problems since there is very little centralization of the records. The following repositories may be helpful: The Center for Jewish History, the American Jewish Archives at the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion, the Douglas Goldman Jewish Genealogy Center, and the Jewish Genealogical Center. The New York Public Library has  a  Jewish Genealogy Collection. If your family has a long connection with a particular synagogue there may be records available of some family specific information.

Christian church records are also highly fragmented because of the existence of over 200 different religious denominations in the United States alone. 

Many of today's Christian religious denominations have gone through highly contentious times, with multiple mergers, splits, mutinies, power battles, excommunications, shunnings, relocations, etc. Many splinter groups declared themselves to be the original pre-split group. The groups often took with them as many historical documents as possible. Lawsuits over ownership of property and documents produced court records which are primary historical source material.

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, etc. The records may also contain personal records (births, marriages, deaths, burials, consecrations, and ordinations.

When individuals shifted their allegiance from one group to another their church-held vital genealogical records usually were not shifted with them and remained 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 abler 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 extant record of the marriage of your great-great-great-grandparents, who lived in California, may be housed in church archives in Florida for a group which originated in Minnesota.

Many universities and colleges with denominational ties have extensive records such as Samford University (Southern Baptist) and Birmingham Southern College (Methodist). Contact the national headquarters of your particular religious denomination and they may be able to steer you to their own historical repositories.