Facts on Local Church Records

Baptist

  The Baptists reached North Carolina during the mid-eighteenth century, and the Sandy Creek Church, called the “Mother of Southern Baptist Churches,” was founded in 1755. Over the next two centuries, the Baptist church became the leading religious denomination in the state. Baptist church records do not offer the wealth of information found in Quaker or Moravian records, but useful historical details and migrational clues sometimes are found in their records. Many types of Baptist churches split off from the host denomination.

  The principal depository of Baptist records is the Baptist Historical Collection of the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University. Write to P.O. Box 7777, Reynolds Station, Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27106. For records of the Free-Will Baptists, write to the Free-Will Baptist Historical Collection, Moye Library, Mount Olive Junior College, Mount Olive, North Carolina 28365. Primitive Baptist records are found at the Primitive Baptist Library, Route 2, Elon College, North Carolina 27244.

Lutheran

  Lutheranism came into North Carolina with the Germans who first arrived in Pennsylvania early in the eighteenth century and then moved into Virginia's Shenandoah Valley before continuing south to North Carolina, where they joined the descendants of the Germanna colonists from Orange and Spotsylvania counties of north-central Virginia. Write to Archives of the North Carolina Synod, P.O. Box 2049, Salisbury, North Carolina 28144.
Church of England

The second denomination to establish a congregation in North Carolina was the Church of England in 1700. As elsewhere, that group became known as Episcopalians some years after the American Revolution. There are no surviving eighteenth century Church of England parish registers for North Carolina.

Quakers

  William Edmundson and George Fox were Quaker missionaries who brought the Society of Friends (Quakers) to North Carolina in 1672. The tide of Quaker migration from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia was enough to make the Society of Friends one of the larger religious group in North Carolina during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. By the start of the Civil War, the majority of Quaker families had moved to Ohio and Indiana where they hoped to escape the effects of slavery and the conflict they thought it would cause. Quakers kept excellent records, and originals of the North Carolina monthly meeting minutes and records are among the Quaker Collection at Guilford College Library in Greensboro, North Carolina. The collection consists of over 6,000 manuscript volumes of minutes and records from 1680 to the present. Early records from monthly meetings in East Tennessee, Georgia, and South Carolina that were affiliated with the North Carolina Yearly Meeting also are found there. Many North Carolina Quaker records are published in part in William W. Hinshaw, Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy, Vol. 1: North Carolina Yearly Meeting (1936; reprint, Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1978).

Moravian

Known also as United Brethren, a group from Pennsylvania purchased nearly 100,000 acres in 1753 and called the tract “Wachovia.” Their first three towns were Bethabara, Bethlehem, and Salem. They, like the Quakers, kept excellent records. Write the Moravian Archives, Southern Province of the Moravian Church in America, Drawer M, Salem Station, Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27108. The collection contains historical books and manuscripts concerning Moravians in North Carolina. Early congregational diaries have been translated and published in Adelaide L. Fries, et al., eds., The Records of the Moravians in North Carolina, 11 vols (Raleigh, N.C.: State Department of Archives and History, 1922–69).

Presbyterian

  Presbyterianism came with the Highland Scots families who settled in the Cape Fear River area in the 1730s and the Scots-Irish who came down into North Carolina from Pennsylvania and Virginia. Write to the Presbyterian Historical Foundation, P.O. Box 847, Montreat, North Carolina 27410.

Other

A plethora of religious groups exists in North Carolina today, but few of them were influential during the state's early history. The Presbyterians, Lutherans, and the Moravians constituted the largest minority denominations during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

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Facts on Local Cemetery Records

   An index to many pre-1914 gravestone inscriptions in North Carolina cemeteries is in the Search Room at the North Carolina State Archives. A microfilm copy of the index is available at the FHL.

   Cemetery records and gravestone inscriptions are a rich source of information for family historians. Cemetery and other sources of information associated with death include:

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