Trinity Germany Lutheran Church, Winnipeg
On November 15, 1888 in Winnipeg, Manitoba a meeting to organize the Trinity German Lutheran Church was held and a visiting pastor from Ontario officiated at the first Lutheran service in Western Canada. For a time, the congregation of the new Trinity German Lutheran Church held services wherever they could, but by December 6, 1891 they dedicated their first church. In 1904 this first church burned down but within a year it had been rebuilt, better than ever, at the north side of the Salter bridge in Winnipeg. In 1964 the church was expropriated by the city and the current church was built at Flora and King in Winnipeg. The beautiful brick church, built in 1905, was torn down.
Murray Gauer's family was active in this church in its early days. In 2006, the pastor gave permission for Murray to digitally copy the earliest records of Trinity Lutheran Church. The following records were captured: Birth and Baptisms 1888-1910, Confirmations 1884-1910, Deaths 1889 - 1910, and Marriages 1889-1910. (Note: marriages between January 1904 and July 1907 were missing from the main registers.) This church attracted German immigrant families from all over southern Manitoba. Because it was the only German Lutheran congregation in the area for many years, the records of this church are rich with the family history of many towns in Manitoba.
The Black Sea German Research Group has taken the original Trinity Lutheran digital records and built a tree consisting of 6,565 individuals. Family connections within the tree have been made wherever possible, resulting in 2,127 families. We believe the family connections and the effort that was made to confirm the correct spelling of the surnames makes this extraction extremely valuable to researchers. This tree is now searchable on the Black Sea German Database.
How to Get Copies of the Original Records
Contact database @ blackseagr.org (no spaces) and include the source reference given for each individual and whether any immediate family is alive. For example, Individual "I0001" in the tree has the following source: "Src Item #1:b42-180." In this case, you would send the "b24-180" reference, the name of the individual (Ellen Louise Bollmann), and any necessary permission from immediate family, to BSGR and we will send you the actual entry from the church records. (See notes below under IMPORTANT to determine if permission from the immediate family is needed.) Additional information in the records can include street addresses, notations of later death, reason for death, godparents, witnesses, etc. Some individuals have many references as they may be referenced many times as parents, godparents, and witnesses in the records. The number of entries that can be provided to any one researcher is limited due to privacy reasons.
IMPORTANT: We follow the same privacy rules for these records as the rules used by the Manitoba Vital Statistics Agency. These records are freely available for Births in 1911 and earlier, Marriages in 1931 and earlier, and Deaths in 1941 and earlier. If researchers request events after these dates AND if either the individual or the immediate next of kin (spouse, children, parents, or siblings) of the individual are living, THEN written proof of the consent of the individual or their next of kin to release the requested information will be required. If a researcher is able to confirm to us that the individual and the next of kin are deceased, the records outside the limits may then be released. All requesters must follow these rules.
Trinity Lutheran Church celebrated their 125th anniversary in 2013 but sadly this was their last anniversary. In August of 2013 Trinity Lutheran Church in Winnipeg was closed and the building sold. The congregation was disbanded and the original records are now at some unknown location. BSGR still hopes that at some time in the future more records from this church can be added to our digital archive.