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Puerto Rico Genealogy

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Puerto Rico Wiki Topics
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Beginning Research
Record Types
Puerto Rico Background
Local Research Resources

Guide to Puerto Rico ancestry, family history and genealogy: birth records, marriage records, death records, census records, parish registers, and military records.

Country Information[edit | edit source]

Puerto Rico is a United States Territory in the Caribbean whose nearest neighbors are the Dominican Republic, British Virgin Islands, and Anguilla. It was formerly a colony of Spain. The official languages are Spanish and English.[1]

Getting Started[edit | edit source]

Getting Started with Puerto Rico Research

Links to articles on getting started with Puerto Rico research.

More Resources

Puerto Rico Research Tools

Links to articles and websites that assist in Puerto Rico research.


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Finding Your Ancestors' Town in Puerto Rico[edit | edit source]

  • Genealogical records are organized by geographical locality. Civil registration (government birth, marriage, and death records) and church records (christenings/baptisms, marriages, and burials) were kept at the local level. To search these records, you must know the town where your ancestors lived.
  • If you do not know your ancestors' town, follow the advice in the Wiki article, Puerto Rico Finding Town of Origin, to search a variety of records that might provide that information.


Puerto Rico Map[edit | edit source]

Map of the 78 municipalities of Puerto Rico.png

Municipalities[edit | edit source]

Sovereignty. Spain 1493, United States 1898.[2]

Subdivisions. Puerto Rico is a territory of the US with commonwealth status. There are 78 municipalities (municipios).

FamilySearch Resources[edit | edit source]

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Below are FamilySearch resources that can assist you in researching your family.

Online Records[edit | edit source]

Civil Registration[edit | edit source]

Births, marriages, deaths, indexes and other records created by civil registration offices in Puerto Rico. Some records may date prior to 1885 as a few municipalities began civil registration before that date. Some of these records have been indexed and are searchable as part of this collection. Additional indexed records will be published as they become available.

To search the same collection by municipality, use:


A wiki article describing an online collection is found at:

This collection is also available on Ancestry.com: Puerto Rico, Civil Registrations, 1885-2001, ($), whcich can be searched without fees at an Family History enter.

Church Records[edit | edit source]

Baptisms or christenings, marriages, and burials created by Catholic churches.

A wiki article describing an online collection is found at:


Other Resources[edit | edit source]

Research Tutorials[edit | edit source]

References[edit | edit source]

  1. ↑ Wikipedia contributors, "Puerto Rico," in Wikipedia: the Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rico, accessed 17 May 2016.
  2. ↑ Christina K. Schaefer, Genealogical Encyclopedia of the Colonial Americas: a Complete Digest of the Records of All the Countries of the Western Hemisphere (Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing, 1998), 127. WorldCat 39622039; FHL Ref Book 929.11812 D26s.












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