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Tips For Success For Biographical Information. Our collections include many resources for doing biography of both members and ministers. Most of these sources are heavily oriented to institutional church life, and are not directly helpful for genealogy. (See Family History.) Some more recent materials, such as personnel records and church registers may be restricted because they are confidential. There are no family name indexes to the thousands of local church records and church-related periodicals. In order to find biographical information about church members, it is necessary to know the correct name and location of the church (See "Local Church Records," below.) For short biographical sketches of Presbyterian ministers and missionaries, though the mail for a fee, try our Presbyterian Biographical Sketch Service. For a short bibliography of some of the published manuals and ministerial directories from several of the historic Presbyterian and Reformed denominations, try our Presbyterian Clergy Biographical Resources. To find out the correct name and location for a Presbyterian church, contact our offices. For Local Church History. All of our local church records are catalogued under the place name and not necessarily by the historic or current name of the church. It is frequently essential to know the proper place name for a church in order to find its records. It may be necessary to spend some time in our collections even to discover this basic information. We have some unique reference tools in our offices which can assist you in positively identifying a particular church. Please ask for help. Not all church records are available for public review. for a complete statement of our access policy, see Access Policy. To find out the correct name and location for a Presbyterian church, contact our offices. For more information about Cumberland Presbyterian Church records, see the Historical Foundation of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. For Regional History. Local Presbyterian churches are overseen by regional governing bodies called presbyteries. There are no cumulative lists of all the presbyteries. We have many presbytery records from all parts of the country, whichÛwhen combined with local church recordsÛ will give you a view of the religious life of a whole community and insights into the concerns of the churchÌs regional leadership. Presbytery records are catalogued by the name of the presbytery, which can change over time. Records produced within the last fifty years are restricted and require the permission of the current owner of the record to be used. To find out the correct name and location for a presbytery, contact our offices. for a complete statement of our access policy, see Access Policy. For National and Global Presbyterian Mission History. The educational, evangelistic, and medical mission work of the major Presbyterian denominations was carried out by a wide variety of mission boards, committees, agencies, and commissions. Archival materials are grouped by the agency which produced them, or its successors. It may be necessary to spend some time researching the history of the agency before you can locate the records. Not all agency records have been processed, and some may be restricted (see "Access," above). We have papers of individual missionaries which supplement the information in the official records. Our monographic collections include secondary histories of the main missionary boards, copies of their publications, and some academic studies of their work. To speak to a reference person about our holdings in more detail, contact our offices. For a complete statement of our access policy, see Access Policy. For short biographical sketches of Presbyterian ministers and missionaries, though the mail for a fee, try our Presbyterian Biographical Sketch Service. For Non-denominational and Ecumenical Mission History. Our archives include the records of several important interdenominational agencies, including the American Sunday School Union and the National Council of the Churches of Christ.

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