Expect the unexpected in church records

In her article, "Faith as Archivist," Judy Rosella Edwards discusses the value of church records for genealogical information, beyond the baptism and marriage records you might expect. In many cases, she points out, church records provide varied information about members of the congregation and not it's leaders only, and many of these resources are online. One such resource is the MennObits project, maintained by the Mennonite Church, which is a database of searchable obituaries for church members of any age, indexed, including by maiden name. This is a great resource for finding female ancestors. The article suggests resources for a number of faiths.

Researching Your Seventh-Day Adventist Ancestors

It goes without saying that church records are among the most valuable resources in genealogy. Many early church records have been microfilmed and are readily available, while others are more elusive. In her most recent article, "Researching Your Seventh-Day Adventist Ancestors," Gena Philibert-Ortega offers a variety of options for researching ancestors belonging to this church, organized in the mid-nineteenth century.

Ancestry launches new Swedish-language web site

The Generations Network, Inc., this week unveiled Ancestry.se -- a new family history Web site focused on Sweden, as noted in a press release. At launch, the Swedish-language site offers access to more than 37 million names of historical Swedish parish and emigration records, all of which are available for U.S. subscribers on Ancestry.com.

In 2007 alone, The Generations Network has introduced four international sites, bringing the tally of Ancestry sites to eight. The Ancestry suite of sites now includes Ancestry.com in the United States, Ancestry.co.uk in the United Kingdom, Ancestry.ca in Canada, Ancestry.com.au in Australia, Ancestry.de in Germany, Ancestry.it in Italy, Ancestry.fr in France and Ancestry.se in Sweden. As with other sister-sites, Ancestry.se offers Swedish-language tree building tools and lets users tap into the world-wide Ancestry community -- the largest global community of individuals searching for their family roots -- as well as an ever-expanding collection of local historical records. . . . Included in these records are more than 1.7 million names in Swedish emigration records, online for the first time. These various emigration records were created in Sweden and cover the major exodus between 1846 and 1930, when about 20 percent of the Swedish population immigrated to North America.

Users will also find more than 36 million names in Swedish parish records on Ancestry.com. The records, covering more than four centuries of historical data from 81 parishes in the county of Varmland, provide interesting details such as names, dates and places of birth, and marriage and death information.

The Salvation Army was "church"?

Interesting how things we take for granted can suddenly spring into relief. Without specific information, who would think to look toward the bell-ringing Salvation Army as a source of genealogical information. What is the Salvation Army, anyway? In her article, "Salvation Army Records," Gena Philibert Ortega answers the question, providing a brief history of this "church," how it was organized, and your best hope of obtaining records. The article shows that finding the information you need is not always an easy task and you need to be resourceful; and, it's easy to see how this pattern of reserach can be applied to other research challenges. The bonus to this type of research is that even if you don't find your ancestor's name in the records, you may find a great deal to help build the story of your ancestor's life.

Churches Offer Historical Information About Family

Alan Smith contributed the article, "Church Records", suggesting that churches are more than just a depository of marriage, death and baptism records, but also living bodies of individuals whom collectively can have a lot of historical information about a family member.