I don't know about anyone else, but this is a really good posting for me to use
in helping others understand how to find Lutheran Church records. The many old
congregations in Oconto County are hard to find. Most have mergered long ago.
Glad you had included this list, even by accident. Thanks. If anyone has other
good resources like this, I welcome seeing them.
Rita -
http://www.rootsweb.com/~wioconto/
Richard and Linda Scheimann wrote:
For an idea of how the Lutheran church bodies in America have formed
and
merged over the last century, you might look here:
http://www.rootsweb.com/~wiwashin/historyevluth.htm
I wrote this essay to try to help explain why the church you are seeking may
not be affiliated with the same Synod now as it was when your ancestors were
recorded there.
I agree that with a Scandinavian name, it's most likely your ancestors
originally belonged to one of the Synods which merged to the ALC (American
Lutheran Church) by the 1960's, and from there to the larger ELCA merger in
the 1980's.
Do you know where they lived in Chicago (street address or ward)? Sometimes
the easiest way to find a church is to locate the people and then look
around in an old city directory to see which parishes were nearby.
The trouble with Lutheran central archives is that Lutheran congregations
are autonomous, and control their own records. This gets more complicated
when congregations merge: old records do not always come with the merger,
and sometimes end up in private hands instead. A central synod can encourage
congregations to copy historical records for them and share them, but cannot
demand that the congregations do this. It's not the same as in the Catholic
church, where the Archdiocese retains copies of all the records within its
jurisdiction.
Linda Scheimann
Linda Scheimann
Co-Coordinator, Washington Co. WIGenWeb Project
http://www.rootsweb.com/~wiwashin/
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