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Church records were kept in the local parish of the church. The term parish refers to the jurisdiction of a church minister. Parishes are local congregations that may have included many neighboring villages in their boundaries. You might find them digitized and available online, or you might have to write to a centralized archive or to the local church where they are stored. | Church records were kept in the local parish of the church. The term parish refers to the jurisdiction of a church minister. Parishes are local congregations that may have included many neighboring villages in their boundaries. You might find them digitized and available online, or you might have to write to a centralized archive or to the local church where they are stored. | ||
*An important gazetteer, [http://www.meyersgaz.org '''''Meyers Orts- und Verkehrslexikon des deutschen Reichs''], "Meyer's Gazetteer" for short''', details the place names of villages, towns. counties (kreise), and higher jurisdictions used at that time. As FamilySearch began microfilming the records of Germany, those records were organized in the Card Catalog using those place names. That system is still in use today in the FamilySearch Catalog and FamilySearch Historical Records. <br> | |||
*At the end of both World Wars, the boundaries of the states were changed dramatically, as areas of Germany were distributed among the Allied nations. For the provinces of East Prussia (Ostpreussen), Posen, Pomerania (Pommern), Silesia (Schlesien), parts of Brandenburg, and West Prussia (Westpreussen), areas which no longer belong to Germany, the online gazetteer [http://www.kartenmeister.com/preview/databaseuwe.asp '''Kartenmeister'''] most efficiently tells you parish information: | |||
**Class: Kartenmeister.com Finding Places in the Former German Area of Poland | |||
===FamilySearch Catalog=== | ===FamilySearch Catalog=== | ||