So, you start going back in time with those very church records. You make your family groups - children of the same parents, the parent's marriage.
However, you hit into what we call "the brick wall." Can't get through it or see over it and you start thinking of your way around it. After spending hours - days - months trying to figure out a way around it, you admit to yourself you're stuck and frustrated. You may go over the microfilmed/digital images book page by page hoping you missed something and even think that maybe the pages are out of order. Hey, It's happened!
Be sure that you check the film to be sure that the filming isn't the problem. Perhaps it was some space saving measure, but I've seen later dates mixed in with earlier dates on some microfilms and when digitalized that error remains. So be sure that what it says on in text description and what it says on the microfilm agree when it comes to what was on a "reel."
Some Church Records are truly missing books or pages. Who knows what happened? It could have been soldiers set the records on fire, or rodents chewed them, or someone spilled their wine on those very pages! We all know that some of those old, lovely books were entirely destroyed by time, by weather, by historical circumstances.
Perhaps some books or missing pages will show up again someday, somewhere.
You're stalled out because you don't find the ancestors that "should' be there at some point. And then you notice that the records are not available for the period you need to see. They cut off just about the time that a couple you're focusing on likely got married.
Maybe years ago some person was filming in an archive somewhere and missed those pages?
Oh it said so right on the information about the records, that there was a gap, but until now, you didn't quite pay attention to it.
In general 1711 is about when churches were committed to write records in books. (Prior to that records were kept in noble family archives, if at all, though in general the larger the city, the bigger the church - a cathedral - the better chance someone was keeping records earlier. Those records may still be with the Diocese.)
I want to share that with you that it may not be hopeless at all.
Sometimes a church did not exist in a small village, not yet, so you can't expect there to have been records. Maybe only a chapel existed, or a grotto, and a traveling priest came there to hold services or do baptisms.
Or a church did exist in the village but it was Protestant rather than Catholic, requiring those who were Catholic to travel to a church. (You may have to realize your ancestors changed religions! More than once. I just found a record in which there were a couple marriages in which both parties were listed as Ref (Reform Protestant) so I wonder at the circumstances that they married in a Roman Catholic church. Maybe they eloped!)
And you may see something that I have: a cholera or other epidemic hits, and people remarry quickly. They are pragmatic and they start intermarrying - Catholics and Protestants. As has been the case traditionally, when it comes to marrying two people of different faiths in the Catholic church, a conversion is not usually needed, but marrying in the Catholic partner's church and raising the children Catholic is.
So far the only "Conversion" lists I found were in a Reform church book. Just consider that you should go ahead and look in the other religion's church records when you're stuck.
But another realization was the inspiration for this series.
Perhaps the church that existed got closed for a while it was refurbished or reconstructed. So, during that period, the parishioners would have to use another church, usually in the Diocese, or a neighboring village that was not too far to travel to for services and therefore what you are looking for is simply in the records of that other church.
I've seen that, if I go over to the next village's church, during the "missing records period" the people are over at the other church with notations that they come from the other place! You will see how the priest writes in that they live elsewhere.
I see that the further back I go for a certain church, the more I see people from other villages using it, so they went to this church because they did not have a church where they lived.
I wish there were a database of church openings and closings ... But you may have some luck by researching the HISTORY of the church or the Diocese, or contact the present Diocese archives for more information!
Also consider that Lutheran (Evangelical), Hungarian Reform (Calvinist), Greek Catholic (more common in Slovak and Carpatho-Rus/ Rusyn families), Jewish and other records were or are held in special archives for that religion. Also a Roman Catholic Diocese may have duplicate records that were hand copied from the originals.
To bring up the series on this subject click on the tag/label Pro Genealogy Tip : Missing ? Church Records
C 2023 Magyar-American BlogSpot
November 29, 2023 a slight edit for clarity.
October 24, 2024 a slight edit for clarity.
