Church registers, also called church records or registries, are registers kept by the church to document baptisms (Sacrament), weddings, and deaths within the parish. Church registers are the most important source of historical demographics for the period between the Reformation (1517) and the introduction of official statistics in the 19th century.
In the 14th and 15th centuries, in many parts of Europe bishops began to require churches to keep registers in order to keep…