Follow Guidelines For Presbyterian Records
Today’s column is a follow-up to two recent columns: Presbyterian church records and the Swenson Swedish Immigration Research Center.
Last March, I wrote to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Department of History, 425 Lombard St., Philadelphia, PA 19147-1516. My letter was answered promptly by Susan J. Sullivan, information service librarian, who replied, “We receive many letters from genealogists, and many of them have no concept of what we can and cannot provide.”
She enclosed three fliers explaining what the library can provide regarding genealogy.
The first sheet was a standard Genealogical Inquiry Reply Form stating that its Department of History has more than 20,000 volumes of manuscript records of American Presbyterian congregations, and the library and archives have other pertinent materials.
Unfortunately, the material is not circulated, but visiting genealogists can use the collection Monday through Friday. Some restrictions are imposed on material that is less than 50 years old.
“Our staff is fully occupied with work for the church, and we are entirely dependent on volunteers to respond to genealogical inquiries,” the form reads. “We receive so many genealogical inquiries that the most our volunteers can do is check to see if we hold the records of particular churches.”
If they do have the records, either you or a representative of yours will have to do the actual search. Those who research for a fee include: Owen T. Robbins, 514 Woodland Terrace, Philadelphia, PA 19104, and Milton Botwinick, PO Box 13464, Philadelphia, PA 19101.
On the reply form is a list of routine answers with boxes to be checked off by staff members: “We are returning your check since we cannot provide the services you expected.
“The enclosed copies from our catalogs show records which belong to the church(es) which you specified. We cannot identify records of genealogical interest in our catalogs from the church(es) which you specified. Your letter did not provide enough information for a search of our catalog for our holdings of records. If you can provide us with sufficient information, we will add your letter to those awaiting reply.”
A large note on the bottom of the reply form states, “There is no comprehensive index to the thousands of family names included in records in our library and archives. There is no comprehensive index of churches by county. Local church records are cataloged solely under the name of the city or town which served as the church’s post office location.
“Therefore, to conduct a family name search, it is essential to know the location (town or city) and the correct name of the person’s congregation.”
A flier detailing the “Presbyterian Ministerial Biographical Sketch Search Service” was included in my letter. For a fee of $10, the library will search its indexes on Presbyterian ministers and provide sketches from ready-reference sources.
If you want genealogical help from the Presbyterian’s history department, write first for these informational fliers - and then follow its good advice.
Jill Seaholm, a research staff member at the Swenson Swedish Immigration Research Center, wrote to me after a reader sent her a copy of the column I wrote about the center. It seems I shared some misinformation with all of you.
The center does not have the Swedish church records, but rather has the Swedish-American church records. The center is the North American distributing agent for the purchase of the Swedish parish records in microfiche, which must be ordered from Sweden.
The Svensk Arkivinformation, or Swedish Archive information (SVAR), was established in 1977 as a government-owned project to make archival materials accessible to researchers.
These materials are previously microfilmed Swedish parish registers, including records of births, baptisms, marriages, deaths, funerals and household examinations from the 1600s to about 1900. However, according to the flier, few records date back that far; the birth-marriage-death records date to 1860.
Again, according to the SVAR flier, first send them a request listing what parish/ county/province you need and the types of records you want. Their reply will tell you what they offer and the number of microfiche it takes to cover the records in question. The microfiche are $4 each.
The center also publishes an annual newsletter, The Swenson Center News - free for the asking. The 1995 issue had several articles of interest to Swedish researchers, listed several other publications of the center (some in paper, some on microfiche), and told of the annual October Swedish-American Genealogy tour to Salt Lake.
If you’re interested in this publication, ask to be placed on the center’s mailing list.
The address is Swenson Center, Augustana College, 639 - 38th St., Rock Island, IL 61201-2273; phone (309) 794-7204; and fax (309) 794-7443.
Today’s laugh
You know you’re a genealogist’s spouse when: You’re the only person in the bridge club who knows what a Soundex is. Your house has more pictures of tombstones than of the kids. The mailman can’t believe that you get this much mail from folks you don’t know. You have to explain to your mother why you can’t go 25 miles for Sunday dinner but you can go 300 miles to check out another cemetery. Your neighbors think you’re crazy, your friends wonder and you know you are.
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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Donna Potter Phillips The Spokesman-Review