The Ledgers of St. Matthew’s German Lutheran Church,
Charleston, South Carolina

A database of the digitized ledgers of the church, 1842 – 1921.

A number of the archival records of Charleston, South Carolina’s St. Matthew’s German Lutheran Church, founded in 1840 to serve a community of German immigrants, were digitized several years ago and added to the collections of the Lowcountry Digital Library. The availability of the digitized records in the public domain has made it possible to create a searchable database of the birth, baptism, confirmation and marriage data contained in three large handwritten ledgers maintained by the church for more than eighty years.

The database hosted on this website is intended to provide a more detailed view of Charleston’s nineteenth-century German community than has been available thus far. In addition to facilitating genealogical research to establish connections to the earlier ethnic community, the database invites further examination of the demographics of what was a singularly homogeneous immigrant community that coalesced around the German Lutheran church it founded almost two hundred years ago. Additional study and analysis of the transcribed ledger records will provide a better understanding of the ethnic minority as it wove itself into the fabric of its host community in ways that changed and enhanced the latter and left a legacy that is perceptible yet today.

—Robert Alston Jones, September 2026