I intend to purchase the book(s): Arnheim Luthern Church (German) Records. Most of the records that I would want would be in the time frame of the 1850s-1870. Can I get buy with buying just one of the two available? Which book do I want? Thanks, Buffy

At 9:43 AM -0400 9/22/02, Buffys97 wrote: >I intend to purchase the book(s): >Arnheim Luthern Church (German) Records. Most of the records that I >would want would be in the time frame of the 1850s-1870. Can I get buy >with buying just one of the two available? Which book do I want? The 1860s was a pretty sparse decade for records from the Arnheim Lutheran Church. The church was probably inactive from 1862 (or 1863) until 1869. On the first leaf of the original text of THE ARNHEIM LUTHERAN CHURCH PARISH REGISTER (Book I) it reads "1830-1861". However, the parish was not even founded until 1832 and the actual *contemporaneously* recorded register entries do not begin until 1846. Prior to 1846, either records were not kept or they were lost. Despite this, the volume does begin with a "Family Register" containing what appear to be *retrospective* entries (births, christenings, marriages) for the families in the congregation, some of which date back to the late 1700s. This information was apparently compiled from personal records in the possession of the individual members of the congregation: family bibles, church certificates, personal memory, etc. Most of the entries in this *retrospective* "Family Register" appear to have been recorded in the mid 1840s (about the time the *contemporaneously* recorded register entries begin), but some may have been recorded as late as the 1860s. THE ARNHEIM LUTHERAN CHURCH PARISH REGISTER (Book I) also does not end abruptly in 1861, but contains some entries from 1862 and a very few entries from both 1863 & 1869. THE ARNHEIM LUTHERAN CHURCH PARISH REGISTER (Book II) covers the years 1869 to 1907. The first line of page 1 begins, "These are the seconding members for the re-establishment of the German Protestant Peace Church in Arnheim, Brown Co., Ohio, Franklin Township, in the year 1869." So there's a gap between 1862 and 1869, covering most of the latter half of the time period in which you're interested. There is no evidence that records for this period once existed and were simply lost. Rather, it appears that the church was inactive/without a pastor during this period. Additional support for this comes from the fact that during this same period entries for a few of the Arnheim Lutheran families show up in the records of other Brown County German Protestant churches. The most likely church to have served the bulk of the Arnheim Lutheran families during this gap would have been the German Reform Church just outside of Arnheim. That congregation had split from Arnheim Lutheran in 1846. Unfortunately *no* records from the German Reform Church have ever been located and they are probably lost for good. So, some records for your research time frame (1850s-1870) may be in Book I. Anything from 1863 through 1868 is probably lost. And the 1869-1870 records would be in Book II. I hope this helps, Brian