Tracking down the religious records of your ancestors can be a challenge,
especially if they switched congregations every time they changed residences, as
some of my ancestors did. Thankfully, there is an abundance of information
available on the various denominations that settled in Rhode Island. A wide
variety of religious groups gravitated to Rhode Island because the colony was
considered tolerant. In the seventeenth century Roger Williams brought his group
of followers to Providence to escape the repressive climate of the Massachusetts
Bay Colony. He founded the First Baptist Church in America there in 1638. Soon
after, various dissenting sects began migrating to the state, including the
Society of Friends (Quakers), French Huguenots, and Jews.
Researchers can discover what records exist by consulting both reference
works for the state and sources that focus on one particular parish or
denomination. A Guide to the Church Vital Statistics in the State of Rhode
Island, produced during the Works Progress Administration’s Historical
Records Survey, listed the church records available as of 1941. The Rhode Island
State Archives updated that publication in 1971. Both versions are available at
the Rhode Island Historical Society (121 Hope St., Providence, RI 02906). James
Arnold’s helpful transcription of church and minister records can be found in
volumes 7 to 11 of his Vital Record of Rhode Island (21 vols.,
Providence, RI: Narragansett Historical Pub. Co, 1891 ). Use the searchable
database on NewEnglandAncestors.org for easy access to those volumes.
The Rhode Island Historical Society
and the Newport
Historical Society (82 Touro St, Newport, RI 02840) keep church records in
their manuscripts departments. If you are unable to locate the records for a
defunct parish, try contacting these societies to see if the missing records
might be in their collections. RIHS has miscellaneous records for Protestant
churches throughout the state while NHS keeps a comprehensive collection of
records for Newport's churches of all denominations. If you are looking for a
particular denomination, here is an outline of what is available in print and in
manuscript form.
Anglican
Both Trinity Church in Newport and
St. Paul's Church in Narragansett established congregations by the late
seventeenth century. Original church records for Trinity Church are at NHS.
Wilkins Updike included the parish register for St. Paul's from 1718 to 1774, as
well as some genealogical data, in his History of the Episcopal Church in
Narragansett, Rhode Island (New York : H. M. Onderdonk, 1847; reprint,
Boston: Merrymount Press, 1907).
Baptist Unfortunately, the
records of the First Baptist Church of Rhode Island, founded by Roger Williams
in 1638, do not contain information of a genealogical nature. These records are
kept in the manuscripts department of the Rhode Island Historical Society
Library, but researchers must first write to the historian at the First Baptist
Church (75 North Main St., Providence, RI 02903) for permission to view them.
The
American Baptist
Historical Society (1106 S. Goodman St., Rochester, NY 14620) published an
inventory of their holdings for Rhode Island titled
The Records of American
Baptists in Rhode Island and Related Organizations (Rochester, NY: American
Baptist Historical Society, 1981). If you are looking for a particular parish,
try contacting them for a copy or consult another WPA publication,
Inventory
of Church Archives in Rhode Island: Baptist Bodies (Providence: Historical
Records Survey, 1939), also available on microfilm through the
Family History Library .
Other notable sources for Rhode Island Baptist churches are:
- Records for the Six Principle Baptist Church in North Kingstown, Rhode
Island, are kept in the manuscripts department of RIHS.
- John Comer, a Baptist minister, kept a diary of the people he met while
serving in Little Compton and Tiverton from 1774 to 1800 that includes some
genealogical data. C. Edwin Barrows edited Comer’s records, which were published
in Collections of the Rhode Island Historical Society, Vol. 8 (1893)
- Ruth Wilder Sherman’s, Peleg Burroughs's Journal, 1778-1798: The
Tiverton, R.I. Years of the Humbly Bold Baptist Minister (Warwick: Rhode
Island Genealogical Society, 1981) is helpful when seeking information on
Tiverton Baptists.
Congregational
Some miscellaneous material relating to Rhode Island
Congregationalists can be located at the Congregational Library (14 Beacon St., Boston, MA 02108). The
diary of Ezra Stiles, minister of the Second Congregational Church in Newport,
which contains births and deaths from 1760-1773, is available here, as are early
church records of the Congregational Church of Bristol, 1687-1705.
For related information, see
- Franklin B. Dexter, ed. The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles (3 vols.,
New York: Scribner's Sons, 1901)
Ruth Wilder Sherman and Robert M. Sherman, "Bristol RI Church Records," in
The American Genealogist 66 (1991), 119-120, 183-184, 247; 67 (1992),
119-120, 184, 210; 68 (1993) 55-56, 119-120, 184-185, 249-250; 69 (1994) 55-56,
119-120, 185-187, 247-248; 70 (1995) 55-56, 81, 181-184.
Episcopal
Some of the Episcopal parishes records given to the
Episcopal diocese can be viewed in the special collections department of the University Library at the
University of Rhode Island in North Kingstown.
Quaker
The value of the Quaker, or Friends, records for Rhode
Island cannot be underestimated. At one point in the mid-eighteenth century,
almost fifty percent of the state's population was Quaker. The New England
Yearly Meeting records from 1654 to the present are on deposit at the Rhode
Island Historical Society Library, which published Richard D. Stattler’s
Guide to the Records of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in New
England (Providence: RIHS, 1997). These records contain meeting minutes,
vital statistics of members, their testimonies (beliefs and convictions),
membership lists, sufferings (penalties Quakers suffered for following
testimonies), denials, memorials, slave manumissions, financial transactions,
and more. The New England Yearly Meeting of Friends covers all of Rhode Island,
most of Massachusetts (except Nantucket), and parts of Connecticut, Maine, and
New Hampshire.
A number of early Rhode Island Quaker families migrated to New Jersey, so
William Wade Hinshaw’s An Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy (six
volumes, 1936-1950; reprint, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company,
1969-1973) on Quakers in the Mid-Atlantic States should also be consulted. A
good resource for families in the South Kingstown area is Nailer Tom's
Diary (Boston: Privately published, 1930), the diary of Thomas Benjamin
Hazard, which refers to births, marriages, and deaths from 1778 to 1840. While
the book lacks an index, a typescript index is at
RIHS.
Huguenot
The French Huguenots were Protestants who fled
persecution for their beliefs. In the seventeenth century a French Huguenot
settlement was located in East Greenwich, but it was short-lived. Many of the
emigrants left the area, and those that stayed anglicized their names. The
records of their church were translated and printed in an article by Effingham
de Forest titled, "Records of the French Church at Narragansett, 1686-1691"
(New York Genealogical and Biographical Record 70 [1939] 236-241,
359-365; 71 [1940] 51-61).
Jews
The first Jewish synagogue in
America was founded in Newport in 1680 and built with contributions from Jews
throughout the colonies. The papers of Aaron Lopez, one of the first Jews in
Rhode Island, are at the NHS.
Methodist
Some records for Rhode Island Methodist churches are in
the collections of the library of the Boston University Theological School (745
Commonwealth Ave, Boston, MA 02215). A list of their holdings appears on their
website). Church records
include: State Street Methodist Episcopal Church (Bristol), several parishes in
Newport, and the Print Works Mission (Cranston). Unfortunately, the collections
for the African Methodist Episcopal churches owned by the Rhode Island
Black Heritage Society are currently in storage and unavailable for
viewing.
Moravian
The records for the Moravian Church in Newport are in the
Moravian Archives
(41 West Locust St., Bethlehem, PA 18018). The Moravians are a Christian
sect established in 1457.
Roman Catholic
Some parishes will
allow individuals to use their records, though most will direct you to the Diocesan Archives
(1 Cathedral Square, Providence, RI 02903). Irish parish registers may be
viewed at the Chancery Archives of the Archdiocese of Boston (2121 Commonwealth
Avenue, Brighton, MA 02135). Father Robert Hayman's history of the Catholic
Church in Rhode Island, Catholicism in Rhode Island and the Diocese of
Providence (Providence: Diocese of Providence, 1982) provides a good general
overview. The American French
Genealogical Society (78 Earle St., Woonsocket, RI 02895) transcribed and
published parish records for Rhode Island churches.
It is important to regularly search the Internet for new transcriptions,
publications, digitized publications, and databases. For instance the Rhode Island GenWeb site
has several items of interest to researchers looking for religious records.
Among them are a membership list of the Sabbatarian Church (Seventh Day Baptist)
of Newport from 1671 to 1830 and Memorials of Deceased Friends (Quakers) of New
England Yearly Meeting. Another tool for finding manuscripts in unlikely places
is the National
Union Catalog of Manuscripts .
I continue to search for records on my elusive ancestors and I am hopeful
they will turn up. Never give up hope! It is possible to find valuable
information in the most unlikely places. Utilize online message boards and get
the word out about your ancestors. Investigate manuscript collections of
societies and libraries in the family’s area. Original religious documents might
be discovered in an attic or basement, tucked away and long forgotten by their
owners. You never know when the exact papers that were declared "missing" will
suddenly be found.