In answer to the question about Methodist archives: Each Conference of the United Methodist Church has its own Conference Archive. (A Conference is the Methodist equivalent of a diocese.) The archives for the Baltimore-Washington Conference are held at Lovely Lane Museum, 2200 St. Paul Street, Baltimore MD 21218, phone 410-889-4458. The archivist is Suni Johnson, and she's usually there Monday through Friday 10-4. There is also a national archive, held at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. However, if you are looking for individual baptism, marriage, or burial records, you need to go to the church where the event occurred. With a few notable exceptions, those records are held in the local churches. The main exception is in the case of a church that goes out of business. Those records are transferred to the Conference Archive. In the DC area, the records of Dumbarton United Methodist Church in Georgetown are held at the Historical Society of Washington, and some of the records of Congress Street Methodist Protestant Church are held at Wesley Theological Seminary. In both cases, the local church records are of particular historic interest, although both congregations are still in business. Conference archives are mostly papers and records of pastors, church agencies, and closed churches and church periodicals. Jane Donovan