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Belarus Church Records

Revision as of 17:26, 19 January 2023 by Elliealiese (talk | contribs) (Changed Historical Background/Info sections)

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For information about records for non-Christian religions in Belarus, go to the Religious Records page.

Online Records

  • British Armed Forces and Overseas Deaths and Burials, index and images, ($)
  • Litwa-metryki cz. Lithuania vital records with online images. Map pins indicate villages from which records are available. Includes some records from Belarus.
      • Click the down arrow to the left of "Cz. I i II" to open the full list, which gives all these links.
      • A list of records and links to descriptions and images will appear. Example:
    KOMAJE
    first book of deaths from 1894 to 1895 year. Description | see
    2nd book of deaths of the 19th century. Description | see
    third book of births of the 20th century. And half Description | See
    the 4th book of births from 1860 to 1866 year. Description | See
    5. book of births from 1866 to 1873 year. Description | See
    • Description and See are clickable links. See takes you to the images.

Introduction

Metrical Books (Church Records)

The Church acted as both a religious and civil agent in recording vital events and church sacraments such as baptism, marriage, and burial. Peter the Great mandated the keeping of Orthodox books in 1722 and the format was standardized in 1724. Printed forms were first introduced in 1806, and in 1838 a format was established that prevailed until 1920 when civil registration began. The priest made a transcript for the ecclesiastical court (dukhovnaia konsistoriia) having jurisdiction. Jewish transcripts were filed with the local town council (gorodskaia duma). Old Believer and Baptist transcripts were sent to the provincial administration (gubernskoe upravlenie). The distinction between the original and the transcript is often ignored by Belarusian record keepers.

Record Coverage

Population coverage is about 70% coverage for early periods, 90% from about 1830 through the introduction of civil registration and the fall of churches in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, with about 50% among minority religions and dissident groups such as Old Believers and Baptists.s.[1]

Years of record coverage vary depending upon religion and location. See below for some general guidelines:

  • Russian Orthodox records began in 1722
  • Roman Catholic records began as early as 1613, with transcripts beginning in 1826
  • Jewish records were required to be kept beginning in 1835. Prior to this point, you may find them recorded in the church books of other religious denominations.
  • Evangelical Lutheran/Protestant records began as early as 1641, with transcripts beginning in 1833
  • Greek Catholic/Greek Orthodox records began in 1796
  • Old Believers records began in 1874

Confession Lists

Register of orthodox parishioners taken at Easter confession:Attendance at confession and communion was required of the family members over the age of seven. Sometimes they are interfiled with metrical books in a record group or collection.

Time period: 1723-about 1930.

Contents: Lists head of household, names of family members (including children not attending confession) with their ages and relationship to head of household, residence (number of house or other identification), and whether or not they attended confession.

Location: Central state historical archives in Minsk and Grodno. Population coverage: 10% (see preservation note). Because this is a voluminous record type, many have been discarded. The standard rule was to retain only 2% but in some cases more were preserved. Consequently, these exist for only a small percentage of parishes. The records are well preserved in good facilities. The records were little used during twentieth century.[1]

According to the census of as of November 2011, 58.9% of all Belarusians adhere to some kind of religion; out of those, Eastern Orthodoxy (Belarusian Exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church) makes up about 82%. Roman Catholicism is practiced mostly in the western regions, and there are also different denominations of Protestantism. Minorities also practice Greek Catholicism, Judaism, Islam and Neopaganism. Overall, 48.3% of the population is Orthodox Christian, 41.1% is not religious, 7.1% is Catholic and 3.3% follows other religions.

Russian Orthodox: Belarusian Exarchate

The first Belarusian diocese was founded in Polotsk in 992; Turavsk was established as Belarus's second diocese in 1005, both part of the main church headquartered in Kyiv. During the 1300s, both dioceses were moved under the Orthodox Church headquartered in Moscow. These dioceses both ceased to exist in 1596; in 1632, an Orthodox church diocese was reestablished in Mogilev in 1632. As the Russian empire acquired sovereignty over the territory of Belarus, the diocese of Minsk was created; the 1800s saw the establishment of three additional dioceses. At the beginning of World War I (1914), there were 3,552 churches within the 5 Orthodox dioceses in Belarus. [2]

Roman Catholic

The first Roman Catholic diocese located in Belarus was established in Turov between 1008 and 1013. Catholics was the dominant religion of the Belarusian nobility and much of western Belarus. During the Russian Empire time period, there was tension between the minority Catholics and the majority Russian Orthodox Church. As of today, there are four Catholic dioceses in Belarus: Minsk-Mohilyov, Pinsk, Hrodna, and Vitebsk. Belarus's Catholic minority is concentrated in the western part of the country, especially around Hrodna, and is made up of a mixture of Belarusians and the country's Polish and Lithuanian minorities. In a statement to the media regarding Belarusian-Vatican ties, President Lukashenko stated that Orthodox and Catholic believers are the "two main confessions in our country".[3]


How to Find Records

Gazetteers

You might need to do some work in maps and gazetteers to learn more about your ancestors' locality. Not every town had a church, so villagers would travel to their nearest parish church for services. To find church records for your ancestor, you must find the name of the town and name of the parish church where your ancestor attended church. The name of the diocese and deanery are needed. The church diocese and deanery may not match the voivodeships or gubernia that you found for civil records.

Gazetteers can help you learn these details. The online Radzima.net Gazetteer lists information about towns, villages, and parishes. It has a place name search engine, an alphabetical list of places through the years, and lists organized by http://www.radzima.net/eng/ Orthodox eparchies and Catholic dioceses (scroll down the left sidebar to these lists.)

The wiki article, Belarus Gazetteers explains other gazetteers.

These volunteer organizations can connect you to someone who understands better how to use the gazetteers and even search them for you to find your parish.

Digital Copies of Church Records in the FamilySearch Catalog

Watch for digitized copies of church records to be added to the collection of the FamilySearch Library. Some records might have viewing restrictions, and can only be viewed at a FamilySearch Center near you, and/or by members of supporting organizations. To find records:

a. Click on the records of Belarus.
b. Click on Places within Belarus and a list of states will appear. Clicking on a state will bring up a list of counties. Clicking on a county will bring up a list of towns.
Or Directly enter the name of the town here.
c. Click on your town if it appears, or the location which you believe was the parish which served your town or village.
d. Click on the "Church records" topic. Click on the blue links to specific record titles.
e. Some combination of these icons will appear at the far right of the listing for the record. FHL icons.png. The magnifying glass indicates that the record is indexed. Clicking on the magnifying glass will take you to the index. Clicking on the camera will take you to an online digital copy of the records.

Records in National Archives

National Historical Archive of Belarus in Minsk provides Research Services for Fees.

From the "Genealogy" page of the National Archives of Belarus: "The Belarusian archives store a large number of documents that can be used in genealogical research, are of interest for the restoration of pedigrees (metric books, revision tales, accounting documents of various departments, classes, nationalities, etc.). Mostly these documents are in the National Historical Archive of Belarus in Minsk (on the territory of the former Minsk, Mogilev, Vitebsk and partially Grodno provinces of the Russian Empire) and in the National Historical Archive of Belarus in Grodno (mainly on the territory of the Grodno and partially Vilna provinces ) Genealogy materials are also available in the archives of civil registration authorities (civil registry offices) Information on genealogy requests can be found on the website of the National Historical Archive of Belarus in Minsk on the Services page and in the National Historical Archive of Belarus in Grodno, whose contact information is available on our website. Currently, the site provides information regarding metric books (church registers), revision tales, documents on the genealogy of the nobility, documents of the genealogical nature of state regional archives.[4]

Writing to a for Local Church for Records

You will need to write to or email a local parish priest to find records. See Russian Letter Writing Guide for help with composing letters. This might come up initially translated into English. Then you will need to return it to its original form.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 The Family History Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “Family History Record Profile: Belarus,” Word document, private files of the FamilySearch Content Strategy Team, 2002.
  2. ↑ Wikipedia, "Беларуская Праваслаўная Царква", in Wikipedia: the Free Encyclopedia, https://be.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%91%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%83%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%9E%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%A6%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BA%D0%B2%D0%B0, accessed 18 October 2022.
  3. ↑ Wikipedia contributors, "Belarus", in Wikipedia: the Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belarus, accessed 16 April 2020.
  4. ↑ "Genealogy", National Archives of Belarus, http://archives.gov.by/home/genealogiya, accessed 17 April 2020.
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