From: gwb0@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (GERALYN WOOD BARRY)
Newsgroups: soc.roots
Subject: Holy Name Society/Church Records
Date: 27 Sep 92 15:55:42 GMT
Organization: Lehigh University

Hi,

The Holy Name Society is a group or "club" formed at the parish
level of the Catholic Church. "Holy Name" refers to "Holy Name of
Jesus". As far as I know, each church (i.e., parish) formed its own
society locally: I don't know if there was any national or worldwide
organization of Holy Name Societies that collected information on
members, but I doubt it.  The local groups still exist today in many
parishes. My grandfather Charles E. McKenna, who died in 1962,
belonged to the Holy Name Society of St. Joseph's Catholic Church in
Paterson, NJ. I have a couple of wallet-sized cards proclaiming that
he was a member in good standing, signed by the secretary of the
society. One of the cards says "Blessed be the holy name of Jesus
Christ" on the back. I think it might have been a primarily male
society in earlier days (while the Altar Society, for example, was
primarily women). I'm not sure if other denominations had
Holy Name Societies too.

I suggest you check the LDS Family History Catalog to see if the
parish registers from your ancestor's church are available from them
on microfilm. If you don't know the name of your ancestor's church
and/or if you are interested in knowing more about the great
information available in parish registers, I suggest you read
another message that I will post later today entitled "USING CHURCH
RECORDS". In it, I will outline a procedure that I have found very
fruitful in finding information on immigrant ancestors from Catholic
church records available on microfilm through your local LDS Family
History Centers.

Let me just say here that, since the poster to whom I am responding
is interested in New Orleans records, I checked one of the books I
own about the LDS library. According to the book "The Library: A
Guide to the LDS Family History Library" (ed. Cerny & Elliott,
p.166-7) there are church records for individual parishes for many
19th century German Catholic churches in Louisiana available on
microfilm from the LDS. These church records usually contain
baptism, marriage, death, and sometimes confirmation or first
communion records of the members of the parish. Church records are a
GREAT source of information (more than you might think, especially
for immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries!) The
records are even more useful if you can obtain the entire parish
register through the LDS (where you can search it yourself) rather
than having to write to the individual churches for individual
records. More in my later post! Stay tuned!

Geralyn



-- 
.----* PATERSON,NJ/IRELAND *---searching---*  NEWARK,NJ/POLAND *-------.
| Carr,Cavanagh/Cavanaugh          | Frukowski,Kukla(NYC;Poznan,PO)    |
| Meahan,McKenna(also Brooklyn,NYC)| Nappruska(Poznan,PO); Renke       |
| Farrell(also Albany,NY)          | Oland/Olendrowicz; Zalewski and   |
| Harold/Harrold (Co.Tipperary,IR) | Woodkoski/Wlodkowski (Suwalki,PO) |
|also:Barry,Beggly,Bergen,Carson,Dively,Logue,Mahar,Stackhouse,Wendell |
|     Cosca,Davidson,Fratto,Lamerato/Lammirata,Maida,Pignanelli        |
Newsgroups: soc.roots