MyHeritage Adds 33 Million Finland Church Census and Pre-Confirmation Books, 1657-1950

Johan Ludvig Runeberg

MyHeritage.com has added 33,428,981 records considting of a collection of church census books (rippikirjat) and pre-confirmation books (lastenkirjat) kept by the Lutheran Church in Finland. As the Lutheran Church was the state religion for hundreds of years, church records essentially cover the entire population of Finland, and are the most important records used in Finnish genealogical research.

This collection is added to the following Finnish records already on MyHeritage.com

• Finland, Baptisms, 1657-1890     13,975,867 records
• Finland, Marriages, 1682-1892    1,234,560 records
• Finland Burials, 1725-1909          120,980 records

Quoting from the blog post entitled, "New: 33 Million Finland Church Records Added:"

This collection is the most significant resource for anyone with Finnish roots because of the unmatched quality and quantity of the genealogical information it provides. It is likely to remain the most valuable collection of Finnish historical records ever published online.The records contain a wealth of information. Household members are listed together, and family relationships are included. More recent records include birth dates (and often the birthplace if the person was born in a different parish), marriage dates (or a note indicating that the person had married), death dates (or an indication that a person had died), a note about where a family had moved from or where they moved to, and a note about the individual’s reputation, physical or mental disabilities, etc.

For more specific information about the content of the records, please see the link to the MyHeritage.com blog post above.