Status Animarum or ‘Souls Registers’ should be really helpful .
I found this very enlightening when finding Polish relatives. It was an annual event when the priest took a ‘census’ (to put it simply) of his parishioners.
These have been filmed by the LDS in lots of Catholic countries and are obtainable though them.
In the Polish Status Animarum the priest listed all the members of the household, their relationships, dates of birth and where born, the marriage date and place of marriage. All deceased wives, husbands and children were also listed with their dates of burial. That was particularly helpful.
Of course Poland is a Catholic country so the populations of whole villages were listed. It was quite easy in a lot of cases to trace back families a couple of generations at least.
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