Records held by the Lutheran Archives

The Records held by the Lutheran Archives comprise a wide range of records related to the activities of the Lutheran Church of Australia and its predecessors. These include documents and photographs related to missionary activities in the Northern Territory and South Australia. Records cover the period 1838 to the present.

Access Conditions

Most records held in the Lutheran Archives Collection are available for inspection. Some records have closed or restricted access and private records that are less than 30 years old may not be open for research without written premission. Some pre-1920 records are written in German.

Records

The collection includes Church, Congregational and Parish records such as histories, reports, yearbooks, registers and periodicals. The collection also includes photographs of churches, missions, schools and individuals as well as artefacts, maps, books and magazines.

The Collection includes records related to missionary work in the Northern Territory at:

• Hermannsburg (also referred to as the Finke River Mission
• Areyonga Native Settlement
• Haasts Bluff Native Settlement
• Papunya Native Settlement

These may include registers of births and baptisms as well as other information about Aboriginal people on missions and settlements in Central Australian such as published articles, mission reports and histories.

A Guide to Records of Indigenous Australians in the Lutheran Archives, Adelaide, SA (published in 1999 by the Cultural Ministers Council) is a name index covering the records of Indigenous Australians from ten Lutheran Church missions in South Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland.

The index entries for Central Australia cover:

• baptisms (1879 – 1931)
• confirmations (1900 – 1931)
• marriages (1878 – 1931)
• burials (1886 – 1931)
• deaths (1929 – 1951)
• a family register of those living in 1977
• a nominal roll of the Hermannsburg population (1961)
• births and deaths (1964-1985)