Church Records

Church records are also commonly known as Parish records. Since the people in Spain and her oversea holdings were nearly all Catholic, Catholic parish records are the most common and abundant source of records in Hispanic family history research. Since keeping records as part of the civil registration systems did not start until the nineteenth century, parish records constitute an invaluable source of information about individuals; in many cases, they are the only source available for these individuals. These records can be divided into two broad categories: sacramental and non-sacramental records.

In the Catholic Church, there are seven significant sacraments or Christian rites, which are seen as channels to the grace of God and, as such, are essential to the Catholic faith. Since the Council of Trent (1545-1563), parish priests have been required to keep records of certain ordinances or sacraments in records called “registros parroquiales” or parish registers. These include records of baptisms, confirmations, marriages, deaths and burials.

Under the direction of local Bishops, each diocese of the church prescribed the form in which these records were to be kept, and although the specific information required to be recorded in parish registers has changed from time to time, the formats of baptism, marriage, and burial entries have remained essentially the same. The following pages will introduce you to those basic formats; that is, they will focus on the specific information contained in each entry and discuss where that information can usually be found.

To learn more about these kinds of parish records, select the record types found at the top of the page.

Parish records also include records that record other events that are not related to the sacraments of the Catholic church. These other records include church censuses, account books, local history documents, and fraternal order books. While these records are used less often in family history research than baptisms, marriages, and burials, they can still be a valuable source of additional information. For example, a cofradía book, for instance, might reveal an ancestor's officeholding or financial standing within the community in a way sacramental records never would.

For examples for church records see the document gallery.

Image: Coto, Luis. The Collegiate Church of Guadalupe. 1859. Oil on canvas. Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City. Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org : accessed 30 July 2026). This image is in the public domain.