IIGS™ Newsletter - March 1999
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IIGS™ Newsletter - March 1999
The following was originally posted by Fr. Phil Littlefield to the NYC-ROOTS-L list on Feb. 24, 1999, and is reprinted here with permission from the author.
I am pastor of a small, Eastern Rite Catholic church in Wisconsin, originally an ethnic parish. I have NO staff except for one volunteer who does the bookkeeping.
I do occasionally get requests for information from genealogists, adoptees and others. I have yet to receive a donation enclosed. In my memory I have failed to honor only one request "through my own fault." I put the letter aside and forgot about it.
I am only too happy to fulfill requests as I am a genealogy buff myself. And, though I am a priest, I have run into the occasional snotty cleric or secretary.
When someone sends in a request for Aunt Sadie's baptismal or marriage information, I have several old books to look through. The first one includes information written in Latin and/or Arabic. For the most part I can handle the Latin, but I have to find an old parishioner who can read and translate Syrian-Arabic.
As with any manuscript records, there may be misspellings, the inquirer may have misinformation, the "baptismal" name may be different from the given name, especially in parishes of ethnic origin.
A polish boy baptized Cieslaw may have been known to virtually everyone as "Chester." A Lebanese girl baptized "Sadeeq'a" may be known as Aunt Sadie. I've run into Italian children baptized Assuntina or Consuella who were known only as "Sue."
So you send a request for a marriage record of a "Susan Martin." My suggestions are as follows:
- Realize that there may be no parish secretary. The priest may be doing your genealogical research between hospital visits, furnace tune-ups, and sacristy work.
- Provide as much detail as possible. If "Susan Martin" is recorded as "Consuella DeMartini," there's no way she can be efficiently looked up without as precise a date as possible, parents' names, etc.
- Virtually all Catholic records are cross-referenced with the parish of baptism. If you can't find the info at the church of marriage, but know that "Aunty Sue" was baptized at St. Joseph's in......, write to them. They will also have the marriage notation.
- Be merciful and understanding. If it were not for computer programs and databases, how many of us would be able to "fish out" an obscure relative or in-law based on their (alleged) name ONLY, without dates, circumstances, other info?
- As for fees, many (perhaps most) churches do not charge a set fee. A donation is always acceptable. In genealogy it seems that we generally have to pay for record copies.
- Finally, an OBSCURE hint. Not all Catholic parishes in the United States are "Latin Rite." There are (now) more than 10 Catholic dioceses of various Eastern Rites (Byzantine, Armenian, Maronite, Chaldean, etc.) largely composed of faithful from the Middle East, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, etc.
In general they follow the sacramental practices of the Orthodox Churches (confirmation and first communion given with baptism, for example). And also, while they are in communion with Rome, they are not under the jurisdiction of the "Latin Rite" dioceses.
Thus a Syrian Catholic man in Brooklyn, New York, marrying a Byzantine Catholic Ukrainian woman, would have no record of their marriage in any Roman Catholic parish or diocese, and you might have to write to the Maronite Catholic diocese, the Melkite Catholic diocese, the Ukrainian Catholic diocese, etc.