Exclusive
Record Sets!
The Catholic Heritage Archive
We'd like to welcome
you to what will be the most comprehensive online collection of
Roman Catholic records for Ireland, Britain and the USA. Up to
100 million records. Only on
Findmypast!
Findmypast is releasing over 3 million exclusive records
including sacramental registers for the Archdiocese of
Philadelphia from 1757 to 1916 as well as for the British
Archdioceses of Westminster and Birmingham from 1657 onwards.
This builds on last year's publication of more than 10 million
Irish Catholic parish registers.
More about The
Catholic Heritage Archive
The Catholic Church holds some of the oldest and best preserved
genealogical records ever created. However, as many of these
documents memorialise important religious sacraments such as
baptism, marriage and burial, their privacy has long been
protected and access to original copies has traditionally been
hard to come by.
In collaboration with various Archdioceses of the Catholic
Church, Findmypast is helping to bring these records online in
one unified collection for the first time ever. Exclusively
available on Findmypast, images of original documents will be
completely free to view in many cases. Fully searchable
transcripts will also be included, providing family historians
from the around the world with easy access to these once closely
guarded records.
The next phase of the Catholic Heritage Archive will include
records from the archdioceses of New York and Baltimore as well
as additional records from Philadelphia. There are over 30
million records in just these three dioceses. The digitization
of the whole archive is a monumental undertaking and, when
complete, will contain hundreds of millions of records for the
USA alone.
Brian Donovan, Licensing Manager at Findmypast said; “The
Roman Catholic Church is the largest Christian denomination in
the world. Despite the popular perception that it had few
adherents in Britain, or was not that important in American
settlement, it has always been a significant component (up to
25%) of the population. The Catholic Heritage Archive will
uncover the history of millions of Irish, Italian, German,
Polish and many other nationalities as they made a new home in
the USA.”
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