Church Records at WKU’s Special Collections Library
Among the holdings of WKU’s Special Collections Library are records relating to scores of churches in Kentucky and even a few in other states. These records typically include church constitutions and articles of faith, minutes of church meetings, and lists of pastors and members. Membership lists can be helpful to genealogists because they may reveal the names of other family members, and sometimes include notations about baptism, marriage and death. Lucky researchers might even discover extra tidbits of information about an ancestor–for example, a reprimand (or worse, expulsion from the flock) for poor attendance, fighting, gambling, profanity or adultery.
A new web page now allows researchers to gain easy access to information about our church records, and to download a finding aid from TopScholar, WKU’s digital repository, that describes the records in more detail. The page will be updated whenever more records are donated or acquired. Click here for a look.