Registers of parishioners (lists of congregation members) are the main sources of genealogy as they contain a large part of Estonian population from the mid 19th century till the 1930s. Since 1930s many people are not listed in those sources any more as they were not members of the church.
Lutheran congregations started to keep registers of parishioners in various times. The oldest registers of parishioners are known from South Estonia from the end of 17th century. The Act of Lutheran Church enforced in 1834 demanded keeping the lists of congregation members or registers of parishioners in all congregations. One could generally say that registers of parishioners include most of Estonian population from the mid 19th century till 1940.
Since the separation of the Church from the State in 1926, many people lost touch with the church and their data in registers of parishioners is missing or incomplete.
During the 1960s and 1980s, the family archive of the Ministry of the Interior (bore different names in different times, currently Population Facts Department at the Ministry of the Interior) has compiled indices of family names based on the registers of parishioners.
In 2003-2009 all those books were turned over from the Ministry of the Interior to the National Archives and the books became publicly available to everyone. In spring 2005, Estonian Genealogical Society started to digitalize those registries to further facilitate using of the registers of parishioners and to trace hard-to-find data. Members of the Society and many outside the Society helped with the data input of their chosen congregation (see the list). With the help of the National Archives it turned into an unified database with a search engine. Later volunteers helped to index books that lacked name indexes. In some congregation all registers of parishioners have been indexed, in some only the latest ones. The project manager of the Name Registry is the board member of the Estonian Genealogical Society, Fred Puss (fred@isik.ee).
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