Membership: Swedish-American Church Records Provide Fine Details

Church records are always a nice resource to document events in a family’s life. Sacramental records such as baptisms, marriages, and funerals have always been a go-to resource for family genealogists. These supplement civil registration or even substitute for them when these events occur before the advent of civil registration.

There are other records to be found in church records. Churches kept minutes of their meetings and an ancestor might be mentioned in them, especially if they were part of the governing group. Records of receiving communion or entry into the full church membership through confirmation are other records that often can be found.

One of the best records found especially in Swedish-American churches are the membership records. My husband’s families were members of both the Swedish Lutheran and the Swedish Covenant churches. Both churches kept records of their memberships.

From these records, you can learn when they joined the church and when they left, if they moved to a new location. The minister also recorded their birthdate, birthplace, perhaps the baptismal date and marriage date, and then would list children as they are born. The churches used pre-printed forms and the best records are those where the minister filled in all the information!

I had previously obtained these records from churches in Connecticut, Iowa, and California through the Swenson Swedish Immigration Research Center at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. They conduct research for you or you can visit the center and do your own research.

However, many of the church records that are microfilmed are now found in Ancestry in two large databases:

“U.S., Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Swedish American Church Records, 1800-1947,” with 3.6 million records.

“U.S., Evangelical Covenant Church, Swedish American Church Records, 1868-1970,” with nearly 300,000 records.

Here is an example from Hilmar, Merced County, California, the Hilmar Covenant Church. Nils M. Nilsen was the pastor of the church and did not complete the information about his and his wife’s arrival to the U.S. from Sweden, but he did for the Noreen family above.

These membership lists in the Swedish-American churches are wonderful resources but remember, the information is secondary. Use these resources to get to the original baptism, marriage, and burial records in the Swedish or Swedish-American church.

#52Ancestors-Week 12: Membership

This is my sixth year working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow (https://www.amyjohnsoncrow.com/) at Generations Cafe. I write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or My Trails into the Past. I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways.

Copyright © 2023 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.