Finding the churches

One of the challenges faced by anyone who does serious research into their roots is, literally, finding out where the bodies are buried. Since public records were not required in most places until the early part of the 1900's, finding early ancestors can be quite difficult, and the best resource will usually be any church records that might exist for the time in question.

In the case of my Reber and Hiester ancestors, I've been relatively lucky in that many of them can be found in some of the better documented churches. Closson Press, out of Apollo, PA, has printed a fair number of books covering some of these early churches and their books are very reasonably priced. In 1995, they published a two-volume set called Collected Church Records of Berks County, which includes records from Altalaha Evangelical Lutheran, St. Pauls's (Smoke), St. Michael's Reformed, Moselem Lutheran, St John's (Hains) and Zion (Blue Mountain). In most cases, the baptism records include the name of the sponsors for the child, which are often the grandparents or a sibling of one of the parents, providing a valuable clue to the rest of the family.

With my Hiester lines, the main churches of interest are Bern, Hains and Zion's, but the lines are still not clear in some cases. For example, I know from his obituary that my great-grandfather was buried at the Hains church, but his father was at Bern, so I suspect many of the other early members of that line will turn up at Bern church as well, and hence, the road trip I am planning.