What use are church records?

Today not everybody goes to a church or other place of worship. However, this was not the case in the past. This is why church records are important to historians. Perhaps the most well-known (and best used) type of church records are parish registers. These registers record the details of everyone baptised, married and buried in each parish from (after that time, the government took over the task).

There are other kinds of church records too. There are records relating to church buildings, how different churches were run, what they spent money on, charity work. All these records can be very useful for historians wanting to find out what happened in different places.

Extract of a marriage register. (DCRO ref: EP/Du.SG 11)