Reference
Record types
The parish register is not the only source. Where it fails, a family can often be reconstructed from other records kept in parallel and for entirely different purposes.
Which of these records are already gathered for our community — see the catalogue.
Browse the case catalogue →Covered in detail
The order is not arbitrary: the worked examples run by increasing effort — from the document that sits where it should to the one that took three months to reach. The same people move from page to page, so they are best read in sequence.
1. Parish registers →
Births, marriages, deaths. What each entry consists of, and why you must never skip the godparents.
2. Confession lists →
The whole family under one roof, with ages and kinship. The best source after registers — and where its limits lie.
3. Revision tales →
A household census of a whole village in one year, with everyone's age and estate. For our villages almost none survive — and why.
4. Court and notarial books →
Where to go when no register survives for your year. 18th-century entries that outlived the books they came from.
5. If there was a priest in the family →
Clergy returns and consistory personal files. For a clerical line, sources of an altogether different depth.
6. How it all comes together →
The end of the chain: an 1802 act found in a book of 1,757 pages, and what it took to read it.
Secular records
In progress
Estate inventories
Lists of subjects with their dues and land allotments; they show a family's economic standing.
Redemption papers after 1861
Who redeemed which allotment, and from whom.
A single document rarely answers the question. The strength lies at the intersection: a register fixes the event, a confession list the household, a revision tale the whole village in one year. Knyha Rodu brings them together under one name.
If you are not sure where to start
Start with the parish register — that is where the chain begins, and every page after it leads on by itself.
And if you are tracing ancestors for the first time, start with the course
To the course →