Austria, Upper Austria, Catholic Church Records, 1581-1919

What is in This Collection?

Event types were often compiled in separate volumes. For instance, baptisms would be in one volume and marriages in another. In some parishes, however, event types were intermixed and grouped into a volume according to year range. When this is the case, the baptisms, marriages, and burials for one year (e.g. 1785) were grouped together before the baptisms, marriages, and burials for the next year (e.g. 1786), and so on. Entries are usually recorded in chronological order, though some entries may be out of order. Entries before the mid-1700s were often in free text paragraphs; sometimes the priest created columns to record the information.

After the mid-1700s, a pre-printed form was used, and the entries were handwritten in Gothic script. As time progressed, handwriting in these entries began to resemble the Romanized handwriting that we use today. Austrian church records are typically written in German or Latin. Regional dialect affects the spelling of some German words, for example: “Maÿ” is recorded instead of the German “Mai” for the month of May, and “Aeltern” instead of “Eltern” for the word parents.

Church priests and pastors began keeping records long before the Austrian government. Catholic Church records began as early as the mid to late 1500s; most church records, however, began in the late 1600s. In 1784, the Austrian Empire required that all births, marriages, and deaths be recorded in civil records. Church records were also affected by this civil registration requirement: because the Catholic Church kept records for everyone regardless of religion, the Austrian government implemented a specific format for vital records that the Catholic Church duplicated for the civil record offices. This uniformed record-keeping system, however, did not commence at the same time throughout the empire. These church books cover a majority of the population for Upper Austria, the Northern portion of the country.

Catholic Church records in this collection start with the year 1581 through the present day, but because of privacy laws, these records are available online only through 1905. Additional records and/or images may be added to this collection in the future.

Reading These Records

These records are written in German. For help reading them see:

• German Language and Languages
• German Genealogical Word List
• Germany Handwriting
• FamilySearch Learning Center videos:
  • German Paleography Seminar

To Browse This Collection

What Can These Records Tell Me?

The following information may be found in these records:

Collection Content

Sample Images

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  1880 Baptism Record

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  1817 Marriage Record

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  1859 Burial Record