Sunday, June 16, 2013

Church Record Sunday: Western Kentucky University

Have Kentucky ancestors? You may want to check out Western Kentucky University's Manuscript and Folklife Archives Collections. It's here that you can learn about their church record holdings and the South Union Shaker collection.


According to their website, their Church Records collection includes:

"records (either originals or photocopies) from churches of many denominations in Kentucky and elsewhere. Typically, these records consist of minutes of church meetings and registers of members, but may also include other information such as the church constitution, articles of faith and rules of decorum, and lists of pastors, elders, deacons, baptisms, marriages and deaths."

1 comment:

Mariann said...

Church records can tell you a lot about your ancestors! The minutes are really worth reading. In the 1800s, in the South, many Protestant congregations kept watch over each other's behavior and tried to help people to improve morally. Reading 100 years worth of church minutes taught me a lot about what they considered "immoral." It was kind of like a constant group intervention.

I'll bet the content of the Shaker records is very different. But also enlightening.