South Australian Parish Registers

Parish registers are the major source of records predating civil registration which started in mid 1842 in South Australia. They are also useful for those vital events not registered after 1842 or to confirm the accuracy of a registration. Many Catholics and Scots did not register births prior to 1875 and a significant number of deaths went unregistered. The latter can be checked on this web site. It could be expected that some weddings were not reported as well.

The following searchable database will point you to the registers available and where they are currently located. Note that only a small percentage of registers are listed and many have been lost. If the particular register you seek is not listed it may be appropriate to contact the parish church itself as all known archival deposits are listed.

The listing includes Lutheran Churches whose records have been deposited in archives other than the Lutheran Archives. For other Lutheran churches contact the Lutheran Archives before the local parish.

For Uniting Church records that start before 1977 you will need to select the pre 1977 denomination for the parish.

You can search the database by place and/or denomination:

Place:  Denomination: ALL Anglican Baptist Bible Christian Catholic Christian Church Churches of Christ Church of Scotland Disciples of Christ Free Church Hebrew Lutheran Methodist New Connexion Presbyterian Primitive Methodist Quaker or Society of Friends Scotch Baptist Uniting Church (from 1977) United Presbyterian Wesleyan Methodist  

In some cases the filmed records can be viewed at more than one of location. Although the item may be the same, its description used by each organisation may imply they differ.