German Parish Registers

How to use this site

This site has a number of exciting uses for genealogists who are doing Germanic research.

Our Gazetteer of German places (underneath the search box on the left) is extremely useful, allowing the researcher to find thousands of places. We list 1,582 places in Hessen; 2,226 in Baden; 2,837 in Mecklenburg; 2,948 in Oldenburg; 7,670 in Schleswig-Holstein; 8,254 in Württemberg; 5,019 in Hessen-Nassau; 13,239 in the Rhineland as well as 2,501 in the Bavarian Province of the Pfalz (found in the Rhineland III volume). Towns will be added for other regions as the indexes become available.

The Gazetteer, as well as the Map Guide to German Parish Registers series of books lists every place where people may have lived that we could find. The places don’t even have to have been towns — Forest houses, docks, ferries, mines and such are included in this comprehensive gazetteer. If you have a place name, but don’t know the region, type the name into the search engine, and if we’ve got the region posted, you may find where you need to do your search for your ancestors.

A note from Bill Dollarhide:

As in any genealogical research, the key to locating records is to know the name of “the place” where your ancestor lived before coming to America.

But genealogists searching for parish records have had to trace the jurisdictions by using old gazetteers-often written in gothic German-to find towns and villages, and their respective parishes. Not anymore. This German map series now makes research quick and easy.

Locating a parish for Catholic or Lutheran jurisdictions is now as simple as locating the name of the parish on a map, finding the specific town, parish or adjoining parishes, and quickly learning “the place” to find your ancestor’s records.

The search engine is a simple, yet powerful, finding aid for German genealogy research. Use the following position searches to find your ancestor’s home town.

  • Exact - type the exact name of the place
  • Starts With - type how the place name begins
  • Ends With - type how the place name ends
  • Contains - find the search term anywhere within the place name

Wildcards - An exciting feature of our search engine is that searches can be performed using wildcards. When you do your first search you will see the “Advanced Features” box on the results page with a quick set of directions for using wildcards.

Wildcards and the position searches can be combined for even more powerful searching.

Browse - You can also browse through the towns in each region using the “Browse by Region” section, underneath the Search box.

The town indexes are now available for the first 13 books in the series; other town indexes will be added as new books are published. Once you have found which volume your town is located in, you can use the associated Map Guide to German Parish Registers volume to easily find the Parish and microfilm you will need for your research.

German Church & Parish Records are among the top areas researched by both professional and novice genealogists every year. Family Roots Publishing Company is now presenting this series, the Map Guide to German Parish Registers. This 45 volume series (13 volumes currently available), which will cover all of Germany, is available by individual volumes, or as a complete set. Each volume is complete unto itself, and is available with either hard or softbound covers.

What will you find in each volume? Only the Map Guide to German Parish Registers allows you to do all of the following:

  • Identify the parish where your ancestors went to church based on where they lived
  • Find out where to look for records of extended family members, and locate those “missing” marriage records.
  • Find the Family History Library microfilm number for your family’s parish records
  • Identify every city, town and place that included residents
  • Find the church parishes for Lutherans and Catholics within each district
  • Locate neighboring parishes, just in case your ancestor may have gone to an alternate parish
  • Use the maps (based on 19th Century boundaries) to find areas for additional research, particularly across district or regional borders
  • Determine the proximity of one area or parish to another
  • Determine of reasonable travel distances from one area to another, just in case your ancestors attended church in a different parish
  • Identify the population centers in each church parish
  • Locate archives, repositories, and other resources
  • Identify the location of minority religions

The purpose of this series, by German research expert Kevan Hansen, is to aid in identifying what church records to search if a specific town is known. What makes these indexes especially valuable is that the Family History Library microfilm number is provided for each parish. Other than travelling to Germany, these records are only available from the Family History Library.

To learn more about the Map Guide to German Parish Registers series browse through the links in the “About the series” section at the top of the page. You will get an in-depth introduction into what’s between the covers, and what makes this series of books unique and so valuable. The “How To Guide” includes actual pages from the book and shows you how to find the parish Family History Library film for a specific town.