In some denominations, the minister would take the church records with him when he moved to another congregation. This is more likely to happen in frontier churches and in denominations that tended to keep less detailed records. Catholic priests tended to not do this, but there are exceptions.
As a result, the records may be in the last church the minister ministered at, the hands of a descendant of the actual minister, a local historical society or library that happened to obtain the records, or somewhere else.
Any of these places could be quite a distance from where the actual church was located.
5 Responses
Any idea where Methodist records may be? I have people in Maryland who do not show on any of the online records for the other local churches
In doing German research I ran across the information that the person in charge of records took the books and moved to South Africa.
South Carolina didn’t keep marriage records until 1911. Very frustrating.
For Methodist marriage records try the Conference Headquarters for the United Methodist Church in Maryland or any other state. Someone there can tell you where the archives for that conference is located, often at a church college library.
Our Baptist church gave the records to the church secretary since he had served for so long. Very frustrating.