Religious Records, New York State (1639-1914)

Have you activated your access to NYG&B online records? 

NYG&B members need to perform an easy, one-time activation to gain access to many of our digital records. If you have not activated the voucher code associated with your membership, click here for instructions. This must be done before searching NYG&B collections hosted on Findmypast. 

About Our New York State Religious Records Collection

Throughout our history, the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society has transcribed and published religious records of baptisms, marriages, and deaths from over 120 New York State churches of various denominations. Click here to read our blog about using this collection.

The records - many of which were transcribed by Royden Woodward Vosburgh (1875-1931) - are now digitized. Click here to read our blog post about Mr. Vosburgh, and why his transcriptions are especially valuable and reliable. 

These records include images of the transcripts of the original baptism, marriage, and burial registers kept by various New York State churches. Because New York State vital records are so hard to find, religious records are important vital record substitutes for discovering your New York ancestors.  

Depending on the type of record you are looking at, you can discover the following information:

• Full names
• Dates of baptisms, marriages, or deaths/burials
• Parents’ and witnesses’ names
• Church name and denomination
• Lists of church members

For a full list of the congregations contained in this record, click here or see below. The table - which can be sorted by clicking the heading of each column - displays the congregation name, denomination, and county. In most cases, the municipality of the congregation and the dates covered by the transcriptions are also listed. Finally, while many of these records are searchable, some are not - the last column of the table will indicate whether or not the congregation is included in the searchable version, the image browse collection, or both.

We highly recommend exploring this table and reading our blog article before using these records.