The Core Genealogy Sources: Vital Records, Census Returns and Church Registers

An overview of the three record types every family historian relies on: civil vital records, census returns and church registers, with what each contains and how far back it goes.

Almost every ancestor you will ever document appears in one of three kinds of record. Learn what they contain, when they started and where they are kept, and most of your research plan writes itself.

Civil vital records

Births, marriages and deaths registered by the state. Their starting dates vary enormously:

• England and Wales: 1837. Scotland: 1855. Ireland: 1864 (Protestant marriages from 1845).
• France: 1792. Belgium and the Netherlands: 1795–1811, under French rule.
• Poland: civil registration in the Duchy of Warsaw from 1808, kept by the parish priest as civil registrar; in Prussian-ruled areas from 1874; in Austrian Galicia the church registers served as civil records.
• Germany: 1874 in Prussia, 1876 nationwide.
• United States: by state, mostly between 1880 and 1920, with earlier records in some towns.

A civil birth record typically gives the date and place, the parents' names and often their ages and occupations. A marriage record gives ages, residences, parents and witnesses. A death record gives the age, the cause and the informant, who is usually a relative.

Census returns

A census lists everyone in a household on one night. Depending on the country and the year, you get names, ages, relationships to the head of the household, birthplaces, occupations and sometimes years of marriage or number of children born.

• United Kingdom: every ten years from 1841 to 1921 (with the 1931 returns destroyed and no 1941 census); the 1939 Register is a substitute.
• United States: every ten years from 1790; the 1890 returns were lost in a fire. Records are released after 72 years, so 1950 is the latest available.
• Canada: 1851 onwards, most usefully 1871 to 1931.
• Many continental countries kept population registers instead of periodic censuses: continuous records of who lived where.

Census returns are the fastest way to reconstruct a whole family, and they give the birthplaces you need to jump to the next source.

Church registers

Before civil registration, and alongside it, churches recorded baptisms, marriages and burials. In many parishes they go back to the 1600s and, in a few, to the 1500s. What you find:

• Baptism: date, child's name, parents (often with the mother's maiden name), godparents, sometimes the house number.
• Marriage: names, ages or birth dates, parents, witnesses, residences, and notes on banns or dispensations, which reveal cousin marriages.
• Burial: date, name, age, sometimes the cause of death and the surviving spouse.

Registers were written in the language of the church or the state: Latin in Catholic parishes, German, Russian, French or Polish depending on the ruler of the time. Our guide to old handwriting and Latin helps with the first pages.

Where to find them

National and regional archives have digitised much of this material. Look for the national archive portal first (for example the Polish szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl, the French departmental archives, the UK National Archives), then FamilySearch, which holds microfilm images from many countries, and only then the commercial sites.

Recording what you find

Cite the register, the year, the entry number and where you saw the image. Attach the image to the person in your program. When you later generate a book, those citations become footnotes and the images become illustrations, without extra work.