Being able to research Catholic records online is exciting. And today,
we're going to talk about the Findmypast US record collection for Catholic Baptisms. So,
welcome I'm Devon Noel Lee with Family History Fanatics, where we help you
understand your DNA, climb your family tree, and write your ancestors stories along the way.
Let me give you a brief overview on the things that you need to know, and then we'll dive into
actually searching the records. A number of these locations are online because they're some
of the earliest records in the United States. Which we'll come back to in a little bit. But
if you don't see your ancestors locations, like some of my Catholic ancestors in Columbus, Ohio,
don't be discouraged. They may become available in the future. Now, the first thing we have to do
is talk about that monkey in the closet or the elephant in the room. And that is the fact a lot
of Catholic records are written in Latin. Now, if you're lucky, you're going to be able to easily
understand the record because they're broken up into columns like this baptismal record.
And you'll be able to see the dates, the names, the witnesses, and the parents, and so forth in
a column. And you don't have to learn too much Latin. But the further back in time you go,
and depending on locality, you're going to run into not only difficult handwriting to read, but
it's in Latin. So, what are you going to do? Well, you want to learn a few basic terminology to help
you when you're reading baptismal records. So, on your screen, you're going to see things like
the word for baptismal dates or the phrase for child's name. Now, this one was fairly easy to
figure out- the Latin term for parents. But the one that threw me off was the term for godparents.
And then this one is kind of nice. It's really great when you not only have a baptismal date,
but you also have a birth date. So, when you look in baptismal records, don't assume
that the individual is a child because there's converts to the church that are baptized
later. So, it's nice to have both dates. So, pay attention to them. Now, I don't have time to cover
all the possible Latin terms. So, I made a freebie for you. Check in the description of this video
for a link to a freebie when you sign up for a newsletter, and you will get a handy
cheat sheet of terminologies for baptismal records. But what's super duper exciting about
these records on Findmypast is just how early some of these records start. They start
long before you can find a birth record in some of these locations. And that date right there is from
a record collection in Pennsylvania in the 1700s. How cool is that? Now, something to keep in mind
is how far into the recent history are we going to be able to research our ancestors. Well, the
Catholic Church maintains a hundred-year privacy policy. So, this video was recorded in 2020. So,
you're not going to find typically anything after 1920. Now, what makes these records so awesome?
Well, there are some things that you are going to typically find. You're going to find the name of
the baby or the convert. You're going to find the baptismal details. You will know what church they
were baptized in. That church will tell you the location, but then you'll also know the baptismal
date, as well as the minister or the priest if you will. Who baptized that child. You will know
the parents names. This is great regardless of the relationship of the parents to one another.
You will know the godparents or the witnesses that was very important in the Catholic Church. So,
it's nice to have these names. Don't automatically assume that they were relatives,
but there's a good chance that they are. And you can create a larger family structure based on the
names of the godparents. Or, if that's not the case, you might find kinsmen that traveled with
your ancestor to a location, and that can give you clues to their hometown. FAN Club research
is really what I'm telling you with these godparents. You might find whether the
ancestors the parents of this child if this child was a legitimate child or an illegitimate child.
Just because they're illegitimate doesn't mean the father's name doesn't appear. Many times they
actually do. But I want to tap on this sometimes, depending on the record collection, you might see
grandparents. Now, it's not US, but I know this happens a lot in Mexican Catholic records. So,
be on the lookout. You just might find a gem or two. And that takes you back another generation.
Super cool. This is the Card Catalog on Findmypast. Then I'm going to filter down to the
United States. So, I filtered to United States, and I'm going to type Catholic records. And notice
there are a lot of different Catholic records to explore that I'm not going to cover in this
video. I'm going to focus on baptism. So, I'm going to type in Catholic baptism.
Now that I filter down, I'm going to select the location of interest. I'm going to go ahead and
start with Ohio. And now that I'm here, I'm only going to be searching the Cincinnati,
Ohio Catholic baptism at parish baptism records. But now, let's learn a few search techniques. So,
Findmypast allows you to use wild cards. So, you can use an asterisk to take the place of
multiple letters. You can use a question mark to replace one letter. You can put the asterisks or
the question marks anywhere in the name. And you can actually use multiple. For the sake of this
video, I'm just going to go ahead and type in a last name. I'm looking for Westermeyers
in Cincinnati. And I don't know how they're going to spell it. If they're
going to butcher their name. If they're going to Latinize the name. But I know Westermeyer
with an m is going to narrow down the name for me. I'm using the asterisk. So, it can pick up as
many variations at the end as possible. And notice that Findmypast is telling me, "Hey, there's about
80 records. Do you want to look at them?" Absolutely. So, here are some of my results.
And what's really great about Findmypast is that I can click on the arrows and sort these records.
So, this first one I'm searching alphabetically by name. I can sort by alphabetically by surname.
I can sort by year. Yeah. And so, on and so forth. You can even sort by parish.
So, these are going to be very useful when you're, you know, you're looking for someone specific.
But what if other members of their family are in that same congregation with a similar surname? You
might be able to pick it up in this way. going back to the original view that I had before
and I'm going to scroll because this is sorted by surname. And I'm going to go to page four.
Because I find we leave the Westermans, and we get into the Westermeyers. And I am very interested in
this Maria Theresa Francisca Ann Westermeyer. She had her baptism in St George in Cincinnati,
more particularly in Coryville, and then a father's name Johannes. Now, before I actually
go into that one, I'm going to look and see- are there anybody else? Are there any other baptisms
in St George? Well, here's one in St George, and here's one in St George.
Now, the baptism dates are 1873, 1876, 1916. I don't really think that the 1916 is a very close
relative. But I definitely want to explore 1873 in 1876. And the fact that this is Johannes which is,
you know, a Latinized version of John. And then we have John Heinrichs. Definitely want to explore
both. But I've decided on the switch. And I'm going to go ahead and look at Eliza here. And
then I'm going to zoom in. Now, thankfully this is one of those record collections where the register
of baptism very English. But I also have those names that I showed you earlier. Baptism, date,
name of the individual, parents, godparents, and birth date, and then you have the minister.
It's kind of nice to see which minister baptized them. You can do a little social context research
on that to find out more about them. So, I'm looking for Westermeyer. It's on the second page
Right here. So, the name is kind of cut off. So, I have to look up.
And there we go- November 12th. So, she's November 22nd. Where's the date? 1876 and that year,
actually. So, Eliza Marianne is the daughter of John Heinrich Westermeyer and Agnes Toby.
And notice to the godparents are a Henry Westermeyer and an Eliza Michael. Now, the last
names the last names of Westermeyers are clues. I want to go figure out who this Henry is? and
how that person might may or may not be related for John Heinrich Westermeyer?
So, there's also her birth date. She was born the 20th November. So, compare that
to her baptismal day. She was baptized two days after her birth. So, that tells me that Henry
and John Heinrich- they have to be pretty close geographically for this child to have Heinrich
and Elizabeth, Eliza, Eliz as the two godparents. They're in 1876 are not really going to be coming
to Cincinnati, all the way from California, unless they were en route already. So,
that you can get some clues about these godparents where they may have been based on those dates. So,
don't overlook clues that are. Take a little bit of critical thinking in order to put together.
In 1908 there was a change in the Catholic Church that helped us as genealogists immensely,
even though that was not their intent. What happened is that if you wanted to get married
in the Catholic Church, your priest had to go and verify that you were a member of the church. So,
they had to go back and find out-do you have a record of your baptism? And if so,
where? By so doing, they would contact the previous priest. They would explore their records.
And here's what's cool that really happened. The priest would then make a notation
in the baptismal records. This is Emma Louisa Delaney. And they would come back and say,
hey, she married John Lily at Mount Savage, and here's the date. So, in your baptismal records
after Easter 1908, you may begin to see this extra column that has this information.
Now, in my next video about marriage records, I'll show you what it looks like from that end.
Where you can trace back to the original location of your ancestors that way.
I hope you enjoyed this overview of us Catholic baptismal records as they're found on Findmypast.
I'm looking forward to new collections coming online on Findmypast to really make this an
exciting resource for those who want to dive into church records. So, tell me in the comments
what records that you are anxiously waiting for in the United States for your Catholic records. Or
tell me what you found on Findmypast. I can't wait to read your stories and your discoveries.
So, be sure to check this playlist for more tips on how to use Findmypast.