Church records   Tags: births, cemetery, church records, deaths, family_history, genealogy, marriages, sa_memory, south_australia, state_library_of_south_australia  

For many people who grew up in care, the search for records and information – so vital to identity and to the process of reconnecting with family – can be frustrating, complicated, time-consuming, expensive and traumatic. The Find and Connect website can help you locate and get access to your own personal records which may be kept by Churches, government departments or organisations such as the State Library where records have been deposited.

Find & Connect Australia, brings together historical resources relating to institutional care at the national level in Australia. You can use Find & Connect Australia to find information, including documents and images, about
* policies
* public figures, and
* legislation

Find & Connect Australia is also the overarching website for the other State and Territory websites. You can use Find & Connect Australia to search across all of the national, state and territory websites. You can also access the individual State and Territory websites from the Home page. Child welfare was and remains largely under the administration of the state and territory governments, and this is why individual Find and Connect websites have been developed for all Australian jurisdictions.

You will not find personal information or private records in Find & Connect Australia. This website contains only information that is already published and/or in the public domain, or information that stakeholders have agreed to place in the public domain to help Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants access records. Put simply, it is a resource to help you find where records are kept.

The State Library of South Australia is custodian of certain church records, including baptismal, marriage and burial registers, and cemetery records. These church records may also include photographs and administrative records relating to minutes of meetings, correspondence, Sunday Schools, and other church activities.

These records can be consulted in the supervised Somerville Reading Room. Records less than 30 years old may only be copied with the permission of the church concerned.

The Anglican Church records include the registers of Trinity Church, later Holy Trinity Church, which was the first church in South Australia and for some time the only church. Holy Trinity Church records began in 1836 and so cover the first six years of the colony prior to Civil Registration which began in 1842. Many of these records are available in the Family History area on microfilm or microfiche. These Anglican Church records include missions and an Orphans Home.

Archival records for the following churches are held in Society Record Groups as listed in the catalogue.

They are listed together in the keyword searchable 36 page PDF below.

• Anglican (SRG 94)
• Baptist (SRG 465)
• Congregational (SRG 95)
• Methodist (SRG 4)
• Presbyterian (SRG 123)
• Society of Friends (Quaker) (SRG 103)
• Uniting Church in Australia (SRG 198).

Access to entries in baptismal registers after 1974 is restricted for 75 years; access to entries in marriage registers after 1974 is restricted for 60 years; access to entries in burial registers after 1974 is restricted for 25 years. Access to later entries is restricted to the individuals named in the records or their authorised representative and requires written permission from the Church authority.

Some records belonging to the Adelaide Hebrew Congregation (SRG 162) are held as microfilm copies and can be viewed in the Family History area.

The Library holds a number of church magazines which may contain references to births, marriages, deaths and obituaries for parishoners. Please check the Library catalogue for more details under the name of the church. There are also various English parish registers contained in the Harleian Society collection, many relating to the London area.

PRG 280/1/43/123
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