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Reference citing Church Books: Named Volume Held by Church (p. 311), would you use the name of the church as it is known today?
St. John-St. Matthew-Emanuel Lutheran Church (Brooklyn, New York), "Marriages, 1901–1905," p. 438, no. 19, Robert Burnside Ward and Mrs. Mary A. Peters, nee Kane (1904); parish rectory, Brooklyn.
Or, would you cite the original name as author and the contemporary name as the repository, even though they are the same physical location?
St. John's Lutheran Church (Brooklyn, New York), "Marriages, 1901–1905," p. 438, no. 19, Robert Burnside Ward and Mrs. Mary A. Peters, nee Kane (1904); St. John-St. Matthew-Emanuel Lutheran Church parish rectory, Brooklyn.
Thank you,
Paul
That's a really good question
That's a really good question.
Another angle on it is, citing the record as-made when-made, and citing the repository holding the record.
For example many Methodist churches were founded in the 19th century and kept records as such, but there was a major reorganization in 1964 and addition of congregations of different denominations, to form the United Methodist Church. So my relatives' 1874 marriage in XX Methodist Church was not recorded within the documents of XX United Methodist Church, a renamed congregation which presently holds the records. But when indexed and image-uploaded on a genealogy-provider site, they cite the source as the records of XX United Methodist, without mentioning the institution keeping the records at the time they were recorded.
This is a different issue, I think, than moving old records to a repository such as the A. R. Wentz Library. There, the identity of the record-keeping institution can not be confused with the present repository.
Good Hunting,
Paul, Jade has given you a
Paul, Jade has given you a very thoughtful answer while we were tilling other soil today. The author/creator of the church book was the church as it existed at that time. A common corrollary would be a situation in which a female author published a book under her birth name, then later married. Would we change the name of the author in our citation of that book? No.
When a church has changed its name, then the new identity can indeed be shown by citing it as the repository. EE would likely be a bit more explicit about the name change to remove any vestiges of doubt about the situation.
1. St. John's Lutheran Church (Brooklyn, New York), "Marriages, 1901–1905," p. 438, no. 19, Robert Burnside Ward and Mrs. Mary A. Peters, nee Kane (1904); parish rectory, St. John-St. Matthew-Emanuel Lutheran Church (formerly St. John's Lutheran), Brooklyn.
Adding the 'formerly' would
Adding the 'formerly' would have been my next step. Thank you for the feedback. It's encouraging to see that I am actually starting to THINK about these issues in a logical manner.
Best,
Paul
Paul, you aren't just
Paul, you aren't just "starting." You've been doing that well since Day 1--at least Day 1 in this forum. Your questions, and your own "thinking through" the issues are helping many others who lurk.