Vital and Census Records

Posts about births, marriages, deaths, and census records

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Births in Danish Church Books: Information About the Parents

Danish parish registers with births and baptisms provide us with a wealth of information about the child’s parents. The information often appears in the same order. If you learn to recognize the typical sequence, it can help you decipher the text in the church book with your ancestor's birth.

by Lene Dræby Kottal, Certified Genealogist®

Can You Find an Ancestor's Grave in Denmark?

Standing by the grave where our ancestors rest can give us a sense of their presence. Relatives that we have never met can feel more real when we visit their grave. When in Denmark, you may want to visit cemeteries of significance to your family history. But how do you find your Danish ancestor's grave? And will it even be there decades or centuries later? Learn about Danish burial customs in this blog post!

by Lene Dræby Kottal, Certified Genealogist®

Denmark's Constitution: Freedom of Religion

Do you have ancestors who lived in Denmark in 1849? This year in significant to Danish history because the ratified the first Danish Constitution that year. It gave Danes several rights, including freedom of religion. Get tips for which records to examine to understand how freedom of religion impacted your ancestors' lives.

by Lene Dræby Kottal, Certified Genealogist®

Family History Clues in Danish Obituaries

Obituaries are among the most valuable resources for exploring your family history. They offer more than just details about a person's passing. They contain a treasure trove of information that can help identify ancestors and other relatives. In this blog post, I have translated seven Danish obituaries from the 1800s. For each obituary, I state which clues I would follow in my continued research of the family.

by Lene Dræby Kottal, Certified Genealogist®

Danish Genealogy: Birth and Baptism Record Pitfall

Danish church records have a certain structure, but sometimes the information is arranged differently in some records. That can lead to mistakes in the research. To help you steer clear of those mistakes, I want to highlight the most common pitfall when reading a Danish birth and baptism record.

by Lene Dræby Kottal, Certified Genealogist®

Baptism Record for an Illegitimate Child Born in 1781 in Ubberud, Denmark

A large part of genealogy is to document relationships, particularly parent-child relationships. We want to identify the right parents, and that requires correlation of the information about the persons.

by Lene Dræby Kottal, Certified Genealogist®

Denmark Censuses: Same Search but Different Results from Different Indexes

Most genealogists probably know that we can get different results when searching for the same person in different indexes of the same records. What does that mean to our research?

by Lene Dræby Kottal, Certified Genealogist®

Migration Records Kept by the Church of Denmark

By examining migration records you can follow your Danish ancestor's movements from parish to parish.

by Lene Dræby Kottal, Certified Genealogist®

FamilySearch: Index of Denmark Censuses

Sometimes indexes do not provide the results we are looking for, but that does not necessarily mean that the ancestor is not in the index.

by Lene Dræby Kottal, Certified Genealogist®

Biographies in a Danish 18th Century Church Book

The parish clerk for Egtved Parish, Denmark, wrote short biographies of deceased parishioners in the church book from 1767-1789.

by Lene Dræby Kottal

Link-Lives: A New Database for Denmark Genealogy

New free database for Denmark Genealogy with "life-courses and family relations of almost everyone [!!!] who lived in Denmark from 1787 until ... 1968."

by Lene Dræby Kottal

Quasimodo Geniti means First Sunday after Easter

What does Quasimodo Geniti mean?

by Lene Dræby Kottal