Philippines, Lingayen-Dagupan Catholic Archdiocese Parish Registers - FamilySearch Historical Records

Collection Time Period

The FamilySearch collection of these registers in covers the years from about 1600 to the 1982.

Collection History

Since about 1600, up to 85 percent of people living in the Philippines have been members of the Roman Catholic Church.

Catholic Church records began to be recorded in the Philippines in 1569 with some records dating earlier. There was no separation of church and state in the Philippines until the end of the Spanish administration in 1898. Generally, parish priests recorded civil and ecclesiastical documents.

Why This Collection Was Created

Catholic Church parish registers in the Philippines were created to record the church sacraments of baptism, confirmation, marriage, and burial.

Collection Reliability

Catholic Church records in the Philippines are generally an excellent source. Often they are the only source of information about births, marriages, and deaths.

Collection Description

Entries for baptisms, marriages, and deaths (burials) usually consist of a narrative paragraph. Dates are usually spelled out, and the name of the principal person is usually written in the margin next to the entry. After about 1920, preprinted forms with columns were sometimes used.

Record Content

Parish registers consist primarily of entries for baptisms, marriages, and deaths (burials). The registers sometimes include confirmations or parish census records, and the baptismal entries may include a birth date.

Key genealogical facts found in Philippine Catholic Church baptisms are the following:
Name
Age
Gender
Legitimacy
Place and date of baptism
Names of the parents and grandparents
Names of the godparents

When looking for your ancestor’s baptismal record, remember that the entries are arranged chronologically. Baptisms for illegitimate children may be listed separately or in another set of records entitled “Confidential records,” which may have been microfilmed.

Key genealogical facts found in Philippine Catholic Church confirmation records are the following:

Name
Gender
Place and date of confirmation
Names of the parents and grandparents
Names of the godparents

Key genealogical facts found in Philippine Catholic Church marriage records are the following:

Names of those married
Genders of those married
Place and date of marriage
Names of the parents and grandparents
Names of the godparents

Usually, marriages occurred about one year before the first child was born. Elopements were common, sometimes involving a civil marriage prior to the birth of a child. Church marriages may have taken place later. Surnames of a married couple may depend on the income of one spouse’s family, rather than on the husband’s name. It is therefore wise to search for a marriage record under the surnames of both the parents of the bride and the groom.

Key genealogical facts found in Philippine Catholic Church death (burial) records are the following:
Name
Age at time of death
Gender
Place and date of death
Name of the spouse
Sometimes the names of the parents
Names of the surviving children
Cause of death

How to Use the Collection

Parish registers are the best records in the Philippines to identify individuals, parents, and spouses before the nineteenth century. After this date, civil authorities began registering vital statistics, and these become equally important. The information in civil sources confirms and supplements the information in church records. For instance, the parish registers may list the godparents while the civil records may list the grandparents. Be sure to search both the parish and civil records after 1860 since some families did not consistently register their children with either the church or the government.

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