Old baptismal, confirmation and marriage registers are going digital. Ancestry.com has offered to scan and index all records in the Dallas diocese, prior to 1971, at no charge.

Ancestry is working with several Episcopal dioceses on digitizing and publishing parish records, and approached us to partner with them, as well. The benefit to Ancestry is to increase their collection of published historical church records to make them more competitive in the genealogy marketplace. For us, we will receive indexed records that would have taken us years to scan and enter on our own. The data will be researchable and archival, a plus for any church that gets record requests with any frequency. The scanning will be done at Diocesan House on professional equipment provided by Ancestry.

We are currently gauging participation interest from parishes to determine how we move forward with this project. Please let us know who in your congregation would be the best person for future follow-up. If you have any thoughts or questions, please contact Amy Wooten at .