Lying not far from the Rhine River in the western German state of Rhineland-Palatinate,
the small town of Steinfeld is located near the larger city of Landau in der Pfalz.
This centuries-old town has been home to hundreds of thousands of people throughout
its storied history. This database is a collection of death records, compiled
mostly from Catholic church sources, for the town between 1683 and 1793. In addition
to providing the name of the deceased and the date of their passing, burial information
is provided for many and residence if from a neighboring town.
Birth date. Baptismal registers frequently give the date of birth.
This is usually the same day or previous to the baptismal date. We do not give
the baptismal date if both are in the record.
Birth date of an illegitimate child. Baptismal date. If the date is
several days, months or years different from the birth date, we provide the baptismal
date, because this is the location in the sequence of entries in the registers.
Married to, legitimate marriage. When accompanied by a date, it means
the marriage date, and the sequence in the registers are by date.
Not married to, but associated with. Used when the priest has identified
the father of the child.
Date of death, or deceased. Burial dates are not given in these indexes.
Burial was usually 36-48 hours after death in early registers.
Legitimate son / daughter of. When it is followed by name it indicates
the parents of someone named in the entry for marriage, either spouse (husband
or wife). The order is usually (1) Husband's parents (2) Brides parents. Some
variation occurs in records that refer to the marriage permission given for marriage
in another place or parish.
Confirmation date. Information within the baptismal entry is provided
with the date of birth in this index. In the years 1803 and 1821 a separate listing
of confirmations was made. An index of these is appended to the Baptismal Registers
Index, volume 2.
"Signed." We chose this symbol as convenient to signal a variant spelling
in the actual signatures of witnesses in the records. The spelling following
either is different from the entry we chose for the index, or is supportive of
the entry we used, but different from the spelling used by the priest.
Date Sequence. These indexes use the following sequence in the dates:
Month / Day / Year, E.G. 12/8/1922 means: December 8, 1922, not August 12, 1922.
