Okay, not everybody has a religion, but if you\u2019re looking for ancestors who lived before the twentieth century they almost certainly had a religion and if they didn\u2019t you\u2019ve got one interesting ancestor and you ought to be looking into his\/her life more thoroughly.<\/p>\n
According to the 1870 census there were about 72,459 churches in the U.S. serving a population of 38,558, 371 or one church for every 530 people. Today several studies indicate about 335, 000 churches serving a population of about 304, 000, 000 or about one church for 900 people.\u00a0 These are approximate numbers, but you get the idea.\u00a0 Most small towns in America had a multiplicity of churches and most of them were fairly small. Mid 19th<\/sup> century America was fertile ground for new churches.\u00a0 What we might now consider to be minor differences in doctrine could often spawn enough disagreement that someone would stomp off and form a new church. In his book, Family<\/em>, Ian Frazier says, \u201cIn the United States, after the Revolutionary War, Protestant sects proliferated like diet colas.\u201d This is partial list of the possibilities for church membership taken from his book:\u00a0 Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Episcopalians (low, middle and high church), Methodists and Baptists.\u00a0 Among the Baptists there were Hard Shell, Free Will, Particular and Seceder.\u00a0 There were also Shakers, Quakers, Mormons, Finneyites, Rappites, Unitarians, Lutherans, and many more, and these are just the Protestants.<\/p>\n All of these churches had one thing in common; they kept records.\u00a0 Church records can possess a wealth of information.\u00a0 The best thing about church records is that many of them have survived decades and centuries and are still there to be found.<\/p>\n Where do we find these records?\u00a0 Some of them can be found in books.\u00a0 A History of<\/em> Sullivan County<\/em> talks about Luke Davies, a person of interest to me, and recalls the founding of the First Baptist church of Thompson, New York and a\u201d furious controversy\u201d between the Baptists and the Presbyterians. Some denominations keep websites with historical information.\u00a0 It has been a great pleasure to me that the Seventh Day Adventists keep an index of obituaries of Seventh Day Adventists and will send them to you for five dollars each.\u00a0 Virtually every Seventh Day Adventist who died in this country has at least one and often two obituaries.\u00a0 Forgive the pun, but if you\u2019re a genealogist it\u2019s like you died and went to heaven.<\/p>\n Some 19th<\/sup> century churches continue to exist and most will share their records with you.\u00a0 How do you search for a church?\u00a0 First try the phone book for the town where your ancestor lived.\u00a0 If it\u2019s not there find a website for the denomination, find the state or city headquarters for that denomination and contact them asking what happened to the church you are looking for and where its records might be kept. If none of this works try the local historical society and the state archives, many church records have come to reside in archives.\u00a0 Try the local library.\u00a0 Many, if not most, town libraries have local history collections.\u00a0 Librarians are among the most helpful people on Earth.\u00a0 If they don\u2019t have it they will probably point you in the right direction.<\/p>\n In the last half of the 19th<\/sup> century many local histories were compiled.\u00a0 These contain many biographies and a good number of them will list the church your ancestor attended.\u00a0 Birth, death, and marriage records also contain information about the church or the name of the minister.<\/p>\n So search those records, write those letters or emails, make those phone calls, and then sit back and wait for the good stuff to arrive in your inbox or in your mailbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Okay, not everybody has a religion, but if you\u2019re looking for ancestors who lived before the twentieth century they almost certainly had a religion and if they didn\u2019t you\u2019ve got one interesting ancestor and you ought to be looking into …<\/p>\n