My last post offered guidance in navigating Luxembourg Civil Birth records. These records are wonderful, and date back to 1796. If you want to trace your Luxembourgish ancestors further than that, fear not! Local church christening records may be able to help.
Luxembourg Church Records
Recently, Luxembourg’s Diocesan Archives were put online, where they are now available for free. In several cases, these records go back to the 1600s, providing great opportunities to develop your Luxembourgish family tree.
Luxembourg Catholic church records are written in Latin, and have not yet been indexed. Rather, priests recorded christenings in chronological order by date of baptism. Thus, locating your ancestor’s christening record will be greatly aided by knowing their date of birth. Even if all you have is an educated guess as to the approximate year, this will help narrow your search. The other thing you will need is the name of the town, village, or parish where your ancestor was born. Armed with this knowledge, you are ready to dive into the records.
(Side note: an online Latin dictionary may be helpful for this project.)
What You’ll Find
Here is what you will typically find in Luxembourg Catholic church christening records:
- Name and residence of child (in Luxembourg City, this will often include which quarter of the city they live in).
- Gender of child
- Whether or not the child is legitimate (if he is not, the father will typically not be named)
- Names and residence of parents, including mother’s maiden name
- Father’s occupation
- Date and time of birth
- Date of christening
- Names and residences of godparents
- Name of priest
The further back you go, the less information you may find in these records. Many in the 1600s or early 1700s only give the following:
- Child’s name
- Names of parents
- Date of christening
- Names of godparents
An Example
My wife’s ancestor, Mathias Groos, was, as we know from his civil birth record discussed in my last post, born in Pfaffenthal, a neighborhood within the capital city of Luxembourg, on 10 December 1835. From here, my first task is to discover which parish he was a part of. Looking down the list of parish registers available on the website, I see that there is one for “Luxembourg-Pfaffenthal.” (Note: The default language for this web page is German. On the upper right, however, there is an option to switch to English.) The page for that parish, however, says that it was founded in 1847, twelve years after Mathias was born, and it has no records for baptisms occurring prior to that date. Previously, the page says, this area was part of the St Michael’s parish. I will need to look, then, at the St Michael’s records to find his baptism.
Moving to the St Michael’s parish records page, I see a link to baptisms from 1834-1838. Clicking on that, it is a simple matter of searching the chronological listing for December 1835, where I find Mathias Groos’ baptism, #197. In this record, written in Latin, I learn the following:
- Mathias Groos was from Pfaffenthal
- He was a male
- He was a legitimate child
- His father was Georg Groos and his mother was Margaretha Thill, both of Pfaffenthal
- Georg Groos’ occupation was “aurigo,” or driver
- Mathias’ birth date: 10 December 1835 at about 10 in the evening
- His christening date: 12 December 1835
- His godparents were Mathias Christnach and Margaretha Thill, both of Clausen (an area near Pfaffenthal)
Now I know where Mathias was baptized! A simple google search led me to the photo of the church (below). Hopefully we’ll be able to visit sometime in the future.
