Georgia County Church and Cemetery Records

See Also Research In State Church & Cemetery Records - Church records rank among the most promising of genealogical records available. Indeed, for periods before the advent of civil registration of vital statistics (a very late development in many American states), church records rank as the best available sources for information on specific vital events: birth, marriage, and death. They are also among the most under-used major records in American genealogy. Part of the reason lies in the number of denominations-there are hundreds of them. Identifying and locating the records of these various churches makes even professional genealogists hesitate......

Churches - Few of Georgia's major religious groups maintained records rich in genealogical information. However, their historical records provide a deeper understanding of religious life in earlier times and document someone's residence when they are listed on membership rolls. Georgia's major religious denominations include the

• Baptists: Georgia Baptist Historical Collection, Eugene W. Stetson Memorial Library, Mercer University, Macon, Georgia 31207
• Methodists: United Methodist Museum, P.O. Box 408, St. Simons Island, Georgia 31522
• Roman Catholics: Savannah and Diocesan Archives, 302 East Liberty Street, P.O. Box 8789, Savannah, Georgia 31402.

Other early denominations present in Georgia in fewer numbers include Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Congregationalists. While their respective repositories house historical records, the Georgia Department of Archives and History has a good collection of church records on microfilm. Consult the holdings of other major genealogical libraries with southern collections for additional sources, including the FHL.

• Georgia Church Books at Amazon.com

Obituaries can vary in the amount of information they contain, but many of them are genealogical goldmines, including information such as names, dates, places of birth and death, marriage information, and family relationships.

Cemeteries - No statewide systematic or comprehensive inventory of cemeteries or bibliography of published transcriptions have been compiled. Scattered volumes have been published by various patriotic, historical, and genealogical societies. Many individual cemetery transcriptions have been published in periodicals.

The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) and others have compiled and published volumes of cemetery records. DAR publications include Bible, court, and probate records in addition to cemetery inscriptions. Consult holdings of the Georgia Department of Archives and History, Daughters of the American Revolution Library, and the FHL for major collections of published tombstone inscriptions. Other public and private libraries may have smaller collections.

There is a online Cemetery database for the book 30,638 Burials in Georgia an list of 30,638 burials in the state of Georgia was copied over a 35-year period from headstones and markers in 600 cemeteries located in nearly 100 Georgia counties.

• Georgia Cemetery Books at Amazon.com
• Georgia Church Books at Amazon.com
• Find Obituaries in The World's Largest Newspaper Archive at NewpaperArchive.com! - Find thousands of Georgia obituaries to help you research your family history. Search for a Georgia newspaper obituary about your ancestor or a celebrity. Begin your search today and find death notices and funeral announcements printed in newspapers from Georgia.
• Search Obituaries from Georgia Newspapers at ObitsArchive.com - it is the largest and most comprehensive collection of newspaper obituaries and death notices in the United States. Each obituary or death notice is indexed by the name of the deceased person, to make searching easier and more precise. In addition, the text of each obituary or death notice is searchable, making it easy to find just what you're looking for using a place of residence, occupation, names of family members, or other personal information.
• Georgia Baptist Historical Collection, Eugene W. Stetson Memorial Library, Mercer University, Macon, Georgia 31207;
• United Methodist Museum, P.O. Box 408, St. Simons Island, Georgia 31522
• Savannah and Diocesan Archives, 302 East Liberty St, P.O. Box 8789, Savannah, GA 31402.

Cemetery records and gravestone inscriptions are a rich source of information for family historians. Cemetery and other sources of information associated with death include: