St. Michael's Roman Catholic Church, Fryburg, Washington Township
Transcribed by Jean S. Morris and originally
published in the Western PA Genealogical Society Quarterly, Vol.
18, No. 3 (Winter 1992), pg. 45. No copyright infringement intended.
"Client work in Clarion County Pa has proved
rewarding for [Ms. Morris]. Not being Catholic, I was not privy
to recording formats used in Sacramental Registers which can be very revealing.
I am cautioned that not all parishes used this same type of register,
but the abstracts which follow certainly did, and through them we found
names of parents, and places of birth, and better yet, parish of baptism.
"St. Michael's Roman Catholic Church in Fryburg,
Clarion County, was founded in 1820. Our [WPGS] library has a
volume on this church's members, which was published in 1974 and updated
in 1987, but it concerns only ancestors of current members of the parish
and is not a set of complete abstracts of the baptismal and marriage
registers of the church.
"Fryburg, Clarion County, is just across the line
from Venango County, and it was in Venango County that my interest was
centered until [I received] the help of Mary Platt of the Venango Genealogy
Club, who found the ancestor in question in the St. Michael's Fryburg
records.
"I was then fortunate enough to be put in touch
with Helen Hoover, of Fryburg, who is a member of St. Michael's parish,
and who was one of the compilers of the books on St. Michael's members
mentioned above.
"These two ladies, along with Barbara Harvey, who
is abstracting the records of St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church in
Oil City for the Newsletter of the Venango Genealogy Club, Box 811,
Oil City PA 16301, were of invaluable help in my research.
"The following is only a sampling of the Baptisms
from St. Michael's, which were sent to me for my research, but they
may help you, and certainly, if you do not find your Catholic family
in Venango County, walk across the border into Clarion County - for
these families walked to the nearest parish to worship during this early
period. Granted it might be a long walk, but they did it. See
maps [in original article] to determine if your families might have
been in these areas at this time.
"NOTE: If you wish research accomplished in
the records of these counties and/or churches, please contact the ladies
whose names are listed [in] this article. DO NOT WRITE THE CHURCHES.
Catholic records are most difficult to secure, and we do not wish
to alienate the Diocesan fathers. All of these ladies are WPGS
members and work for a fee. Send #10 SASE with your request."
