New Jersey, Newark, St. Stephan's Grace Community Lutheran Church Records - FamilySearch Historical Records

United States New Jersey Essex County

	This article describes a collection of historical records scheduled to become available at FamilySearch.org.
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What is in the Collection?

The collection consists of images of baptisms, confirmations, marriages, memberships, funerals, minutes, and other records from the St. Stephan's Grace Community Lutheran Church in Newark. The collection covers the years 1874 to 1989. The records are in German and English.

You will be able to browse through images in this collection when it is published.

Collection Contents

New Jersey, Newark, St. Stephan's United Church of Christ Record Examples
Baptisms (Left side)
Baptisms (Right side)
Marriages
Funerals
Confirmations
Communions

Information in a baptism record may include:

Full name of person being baptized
If adult or child
Birth date and place
Baptism date and place
Residence
Names of parents
Names of sponsors

Information in a marriage record may include:

Date of marriage
Names of bride and groom
Birth dates of bride and groom
Names of witnesses

Information in a death, burial, or funeral record may include:

Name of deceased
If member or nonmember
If adult or child
Death date
Cause of death
Age
When and where buried
Remarks

Information in a confirmation record may include:

Confirmation date
Name of candidate
Birth date
Other remarks

Information in a communion record may include:

Name of member
Address or residence
Year
details about the person's knowledge of the doctrine

How Do I Search the Collection?

To begin your search you will need to know the following information:

The ancestor’s name
The approximate date of the event, such as the christening or baptism

To browse by image:
To search the collection you will need to follow this series of links:
⇒Select "Browse through images" on the initial collection page
⇒ Select the "Record Type and Year Range" category which takes you to the images.

Look at each image comparing the information with what you already know about your ancestors to determine if the image relates to them. You may need to look at several images and compare the information about the individuals listed in those images to your ancestors to make this determination. Keep in mind:

There may be more than one person in the records with the same name.
You may not be sure of your own ancestor’s name.
Your ancestor may have used different names or variations of their name throughout their life.

What Do I Do Next?

When you have located your ancestor in a church record carefully evaluate each piece of information in the record. These pieces of information may give you new biographical details that can lead you to other records about your ancestors. For example:

Use christening and birth records of christenings (baptisms) to identify a person’s birth date and place. These are an excellent substitute for civil birth records.
Use confirmation records to identify a person’s birth date and place and his or her age. If only the age is given, use it to calculate the person’s death date.
Use death, burial, or funeral records to identify a person’s birth date and place. Use age at the time of death or burial to calculate the person’s birth date. These are an excellent substitute for civil death records.
Use marriage records to identify a couple and the marriage date and place and to begin compiling a family group. These are an excellent substitute for civil marriage records.
Use church records in general to identify other family members who may have served as witnesses to an event.
Use the date of the event along with the locality to find the family in census records and land records.
Use the residence and names of the parents to locate church and land records.

Tips to Keep in Mind

Extract the information on all children with the same parents. If the surname is unusual, you may want to compile entries for every person of the same surname and sort them into families based on the names of the parents. Continue to search the birth records to identify siblings, parents, and other relatives in the same or other generations who were born in the same county or nearby.
An infant’s christening usually took place within a few days or few weeks of the birth, depending on the religion. Some churches, such as the Baptists, baptized only adults not infants. Members of other sects blessed their infants when they were a few weeks or a few months old.
Many religions tested the church knowledge of those that had been baptized as infants and then confirmed them a member of that religion. Frequently, a person’s age at confirmation was between 14 and 20.
Church records are considered a primary source. They are usually reliable because they are kept by the minister, or a clerk appointed by the minister, who usually recorded an event at or very near the time it occurred.
There is also some variation in the information given from record to record.

For Help Reading These Records

Some of the records in this collection are in German. For help reading the records see the wiki articles:

I Can't Find Who I'm Looking For, Now What?

Look for variant spellings of the names.
Check the records of other congregations in the area or nearby communities.
Check the records of other religious sects in the area or nearby communities.

Related Websites

How You Can Contribute

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Citing this Collection

Citing your sources makes it easy for others to find and evaluate the records you used. When you copy information from a record, list where you found that information. Here you can find citations already created for the entire collection and for each individual record or image.

Collection Citation:

Collection Citation:
The citation for this collection can be found on the Collection Details Page in the section Cite This Collection.

Image Citation:
This template has been deprecated and is no longer used.

The image citation will be available once the collection is published.