Determining the denomination with which a minister was affiliated can be difficult–particularly if the ministry was not the individual’s full time job and the person has been dead for several centuries. The usual place where one learns of an “untethered minister” is on a marriage record.
One approach is to search for the individual’s religious affiliation is GoogleBooks. Try searching that site for the name of the minister and the county where the marriage took place–just the name of the county and the state. If that is not successful, consider:
- Using only the last name of the minister.
- Use the name of the county seat.
- Include the word “minister,” “preacher,” “pastor,” etc.
- Include the word church.
- Include one word to guess at the denomination “Lutheran,” “Methodist,” “Presbyterian,” etc.
If that approach does not work, consider reaching out to a county historical or genealogical society.
3 Responses
Ive tried for a long time to find a record of my grandfather – a Lutheran minister – performing the marriage of his oldest daughter and her betrothed back in the 1940’s. I had hoped your above suggestions might actually bring that to light. Sigh, no luck. But your suggestion did bring up a marriage that my great grandfather, also a Lutheran minister, performed in Alabama when he was a minister there back in the 1880’s. So there could be other productive outcomes for creative use of searching Google books by just a minister’s name…
Unfortunately nothing works all the time. Do you have the actual marriage record? A newspaper may also mention the marriage and the officiant.
This marriage is one of those sweep it under the rug moments. No one has a marriage record. All the other family marriages are duly recorded… But my cuz would like to know the facts now that all the direct participants are gone. I ‘ve hunted everywhere I can think of.