Where did they go to church?

Where can we expect to find the church records of our ancestors?

Some time ago I realized that some genealogists limited their search to the localparish where their ancestors lived. Likewise, they dismissed promising hits in other localparishes. In this little article, I want to show that this is a sure way to build brick walls.

First a little basic information:

One parish (Norw: prestegjeld) consists of a number of localparishes (Norw: Sogn).

I will use Veøy parish in Møre og Romsdal as an example as this is where I have most of my ancestors and are most familiar with the conditions. However, we see the same pattern all over Norway.

From 1740 to 1847 Veøy parish consisted of the localparishes Veøy, Vestnes, Sylte (Tresfjord) and, Rødven.

Let’s look at this map that approximately covers Veøy parish as it was 1740 to 1847. I have put a marker at the 4 churches/localparishes that belonged to this parish. While this is not entirely true let’s say that people belonged to the church that was closest. From 1740 until 1758 there was only one minister to serve the entire parish. This means, of course, that there was not held service in every church every Sunday. The minister compensated for this by giving services some Saturdays (and on feast days that fell on a weekday).

Here is minister Erik Røring’s calendar for April 1744:

Sunday April 5th: Service in Rødven
Sunday April 12th: Service in Veøy
Saturday April 18th: Service in Tresfjord
Sunday April 19th: Service in Vestnes
Friday April 24th: Service in Veøy
Sunday April 26th: Service in Rødven

From this, we can see that it might be four weeks between each time there was a service in the different churches. Up until 1771, the children were to be baptized no later than 4 days after their birth in the towns, and 8 days in rural regions. This rule was not always observed, but we can see that it could take some time if one only had the local parish one lived in as an option.

This means that we can find baptisms in any local parish no matter where the parents lived. In Veøy parish I have found some patterns though. I am not going to go into great detail as these patters will be different in different parishes. I can mention that people when there were say 4 weeks to the next service in their localparish, were likely to go to the next closest church as a first option and then the next as a plan B.

If we look at the map we see that Vestnes and Tresfjord local parishes and Rødven local parish are the ones furthest apart. I very seldom find people from Vestnes and Tresfjord going to Rødven and vice versa.

Another pattern I can mention is that people from all the local parishes might go to the main local parish (hovedsognet) Veøy to get married or to have children baptized when this fitted better with the service calendar.

Funerals are the only thing I expect to always find in the local parish where the person and/or the next of kin lived. For details about this, you might want to have a look at my article “Three dates of death”

People who lived on the borders of a parish might go to the neighboring parish to get married or to have children baptized. When this happened the minister in that parish was required to send a note to the minister in the parish where the people lived. This would then be recorded in the church records. It is safe to say that this did not always happen. Here we need to look at a map such as Norgeskart. We need to see what would be the most convenient way of traveling.  See Boats, the glue of the old society 

So, to sum up; We should not limit ourselves to search the records in the local parish where our ancestors lived. If we don’t find what we are looking for in that local parish we need to broaden our search and look in the other local parishes in the parish and then in the neighboring parishes.