Hello,

I requested a Baptismal record from St. Patrick's in Nashua, New Hampshire, they sent this letter instead.

"In recent years, several parishes in Nashua have been consolidated, and further consolidation is expected within a decade. One of the consequences of the consolidation has been an increase in the amount of data each parish is expected to record and preserve. The workload on our secretarial staff has increased accordingly. For this reason, we are no longer able to provide genealogical data concerning sacraments admistered at the old Immaculate Conception Church, Saint Patrick Church, and Saint Casimir Church.[all in Nashua] We are also no longer able to provide genealogical data for burials in Saint Patrick Cemetery and Holy Cross Cemetery. The retrieval and transmission of such information is quite time-consuming and interferes with our staff's efforts to keep up the daily operation of the parish. Births, deaths, and marriages are matters of public record obtainable from civil authorities who are staffed for such requests. Very often, families themslves are a valuable source for providing such information."

Has anyone else experienced this? Barbara

I have never experienced this for myself in as much as a reply like that but I have been passed from person to person or just had my requests never replied to and in both cases never got any information I needed or was searching for.

To be honest I would think they'd encourage this type of searching because it keeps the history of the parish alive which is exactly why our ancestors kept these kinds of records.

If they aren't going to pass on the information themselves for genealogical information you would think they would hand over entire copies of the records to someone who can.

It goes to show that many people miss the point of these records these days and what we can learn of ourselves and history from them. Quite sad really.

You would think they would have sense enough to ask their congregations for volunteer help with such things.