United States Church Records

How to Find Church Records in the US
These Wiki articles will teach you the skills and strategies enabling you to find and use church records. Because of separation of church and state in the United States, there are no central repositories for church records. Some will be digitized and available online. Others may be deposited in state, college, or ecclesiastical archives; with historical or genealogical societies; local libraries; or still at the local church itself. Some will give you a wealth of detail; others will be very simple.

Prepare by Collecting Background Information
You will possibly find many different people with the same name as your ancestor, especially when a family stayed in a locality for several generations, and several children were named after the grandparents or aunts and uncles. Be prepared to find the correct church records by organizing in advance as many of these exact details about the ancestor as possible:
 * name, including middle name and maiden name
 * names of all spouses, including middle and maiden name
 * exact or closely estimated dates of birth, marriage, and death
 * names and approximate birthdates of children
 * all known places of residence
 * occupations
 * military service details

'Carefully evaluate the church records you find to make sure you have really found records for your ancestor and not just a "near match". If one or more of the details do not line up, be careful about accepting the entry as your ancestor. There are guiding principles for deciding how to resolve discrepancies between records that are seemingly close. For more instruction in evaluating evidence, read the Wiki article, Evaluate the Evidence.

Strategies and Skills
There is so much valuable information about how to find these records, we have divided it into a series of Wiki articles:

Searching for Church Records by Denomination
In these articles, for each denomination, you will find:
 * Lists of online record collections
 * A brief history of different break-off branches of the denomination
 * Descriptions of typical records for that denomination
 * Directories for addresses and instructions for writing to local ministers
 * Addresses for denomination archives, with collection descriptions, notes on services available, finding aids, and search engine links

Searching for Church Records by U.S. State
In these articles, for each U.S state, you will find:
 * Lists of online record collections
 * A brief history of major religions in the state
 * Instructions and links to the FamilySearch Library catalog to search by locality for records
 * Contact information, website links, collection descriptions, and services available for state, university, society, and local diocese archives within the state'''