This is the church were my 2nd great-grandmother Sadie Donnelly married my 2nd great-grandfather John Reilly on April 30, 1893 in Williamsburg (Brooklyn), NY.

I have been unsuccessful in finding a lot of information about this part of my family.  Vital records searches in Brooklyn have turned up with nothing.  Now I found a reference to the church where they got married in some old records.  So I thought, if the City of New York doesn’t have any information, maybe the church as the information.

So the first thing I did was look up the parish on the internet.  The first problem I encountered is that the church was sold by the Diocese of Brooklyn and turned into apartments.  (Makes me kind of sad because I won’t be able to visit the church to see where they got married.)  In researching the Diocese of Brooklyn and their record keeping, I came across information about how to access sacramental records for closed churches.

If the church is still in existence, the sacramental records are kept at that church.  If you wish to have research done, you need to contact the archivist for the specific church.  However, if the church has closed, the Diocese moves the records to their central archive.  More information about the archive for the Diocese of Brooklyn can be found here:  Archives of the Diocese of Brooklyn

There are 9 parishes that have been closed whose records are kept at the archives of the Diocese.  You can find a list of all the parishes in Brooklyn here:  Chronological List of Brooklyn Parishes

According to this list, St. Vincent de Paul’s was founded in 1860 and was closed in 2004.  In 1985, the school attached to the church was merged with Our Lady Mt. Carmel and renamed Northside Catholic.  Northside Catholic closed in 2009.  The church building was later sold, and the patrimony was removed in 2012.

To requests a sacramental record (such as Baptism, Confirmation or Marriage), the Diocese provides a form to be filled out here:  Form to Request Sacramental Certificate.  The Diocese requests a donation of $25 for records searched.