Visiting Religious Archives for Genealogy

Last week, I had the opportunity to visit both the Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives and the United Church of Canada Archives, which are both located in Toronto. In both cases, I was primarily looking for Presbyterian records to help with my own genealogy research.

The United Church was founded in 1925 in Canada with the merging of Methodists, Congregationalists, and many Presbyterian congregations.  Any congregations that joined should have their records in the United Church Archives, even for records created prior to 1925. Other Presbyterian congregations opted not to join this union, and their records should be found in the Presbyterian Archives.

Four Congregations Enter United Church[1]

Did your ancestor's congregation join the United Church?

Trying to figure out what records are where takes some advanced planning, combing through the online catalogues of both repositories. My wish-list item would be for their websites to have interactive maps showing where the congregations were located, and generally what areas they served. This would really help in determining what church our ancestors most likely attended, or else the next closest options. Perhaps a great project for a summer student?!

Both archives require you to make an appointment, and to contact them in advance to let them know what items you want to look at, so they can pull them out of storage. Some of their records are on microfilm, and in other cases, you’ll be looking at original records. Both archives have some books and finding aids that you can use.

The United Church Archives has a large Wesleyan Methodist baptismal index, and then several books abstracting the events themselves, organized by county. I believe this is the same information offered in the Ancestry database “Canada, Wesleyan Methodist Baptismal Register, 1828-1910” and also found on Bill Martin’s Rootsweb site, so you may find these sources helpful in pointing you towards relevant original records.

Many of my relatives were not particularly loyal to a denomination, and some of them seemed to switch between Anglican, Methodist and Presbyterian on each census. And even if one congregation was closer, there were different types of Presbyterians & Methodists, and your ancestor might have aligned with the ideas of a more distant congregation, so the closest isn’t always going to be the right one. Add to that, the lack of uniformity amongst the records created, and the complication of some records not surviving – it makes it hard to predict exactly what you’ll find and where!

Rivalry among Denominations[2]

What kind of Methodist or Presbyterian was your ancestor?

For some Presbyterian congregations, I was able to look at surviving session minutes, and these often mentioned individuals applying to join the congregation, or transferring out of it. The minutes also sometimes mentioned individuals who were being disciplined for perceived poor behaviour, and I occasionally saw obituary information for important church members. For some locations, there were communion rolls – basically a mini-census of church members eligible to receive communion. The archivist explained to me, however, that while some Presbyterians were members of the congregation, and could receive communion, others were merely adherents who attended the church sometimes, but weren’t fully members, and therefore weren’t on the communion roll. Some congregations had baptisms or marriage records- I saw no burials recorded in any of the records I was using, although occasionally the session minutes or the communion lists recorded someone’s death.

Both repositories had helpful archivists available to make suggestions and answer my questions. It’s great to research with an expert at the desk next to you! But even if you can’t visit in person, some of their digital resources may be able to assist your from afar.

The United Archives has digitized The Christian Guardian newspaper (1829-1925), and it is available on their website. While you can word-search, the results are not highlighted, requiring you to read the entire issue of the paper to try to find where the word is mentioned. Still, the digging could be well worth it. In this example, I located an obituary for an Irish woman with a common name (Mary Henderson), giving a county of origin in Ireland – often nearly impossible information to learn in this time frame, especially for women.[3]

Obituary from the Christian Guardian 

Likewise, the Presbyterian Archives has digitized the Presbyterian Record (1876-2016), available on the Internet Archive. Luckily, you can word-search within the issues, and the results are highlighted, making your searches quick and efficient. Again, I was able to find an obituary for an Irish immigrant, giving me her county of origin and her maiden name.[4]

Obituary from the Presbyterian Record

Fantastic news for me and others whose family flip-flopped denominations: the United, Presbyterian and Anglican archives are planning to move together into a new building in Toronto! I imagine there will be state-of-the-art archival storage, but also cost-saving efficiencies by sharing the space. I’m not sure what the timeline is for the move (I think it’s still some time away), but it’s something to keep an eye on, especially because I would expect some temporary closures during the move and reorganization phases.

[1] “Four Congregations Enter United Church,” The Ottawa Citizen (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada), 23 Dec 1923, p. 1, col. 2; digital image, Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com : accessed 15 Dec 2024).

[2] “Rivalry among denominations,” The Bruce Reporter (Kincardine, Ontario, Canada) 27 Oct 1881 pg. 1, col 6; digital image, Bruce County Museum and Cultural Centre  (https://newspapers.brucemuseum.ca : accessed 15 Dec 2024).

[3] “Died,” The Christian Guardian (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 10 April 1850, p. 301, col. 5; digital images, The United Church of Canada Archives (https://www.unitedchurcharchives.ca : accessed 15 Dec 2024).

[4] “Deaths,” The Presbyterian Record (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), May 1876, p. 205, col. 2; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/presbyterianchurchcanadaarchives : accessed 15 Dec 2024).