About this index

What is this index? This site makes the typed transcripts (Abschriften) of the Status Animarum of 1749–1751 searchable. The transcripts are available as scans on Matricula Online, but they cannot be searched as text there. I converted the scans to text with optical character recognition (OCR) and divided that text into households automatically. An AI assistant (Claude, by Anthropic) helped me with this. The programs used are public and can be found in the GitHub repository.

What is the Status Animarum? Status animarum is Latin for 'state of souls'. It is a register of souls: a list of all inhabitants of a parish. In November 1749 the diocese of Münster ordered every parish priest to draw up such a list. The result was the first near-complete count of the population of the Prince-Bishopric of Münster. For each household it usually gives the names, the age, the position in the household (wife, child, farmhand, maid) and often the occupation or status. This makes it a key source for family history in the Münsterland region.

What is included, and what is not? A Status Animarum survives for about 200 parishes, but not all of them have a typed transcript. This index contains only the 106 volumes with a typed transcript. According to the literature, the parishes of the city of Münster itself are already missing from the original records. If your place is not in the list of parishes, check Matricula for a handwritten original (volumes whose ID starts with SA_ instead of SAA_).

Source and rights The scans belong to the Bistumsarchiv Münster (diocesan archive of Münster) and are published on Matricula Online under the licence CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. This site does not show or copy any scans. It contains only the OCR text and links each result to the scan on Matricula. The Bistumsarchiv Münster was informed about this index in November 2026, as the Matricula terms of use require. The site is free and non-commercial. The index itself (text, division into households, corrections) is available under CC BY-NC 4.0.

Thanks are due to the Bistumsarchiv Münster and Matricula Online (ICARUS), who made this source accessible, and to the archive staff who once typed the transcripts.

Limitations: read this before drawing conclusions

• The text contains reading errors. OCR does not always read the old typewriter letters correctly. Capital letters typed slightly raised are often misread ('laria' instead of Maria). An automatic correction pass has fixed the most common errors. Corrected words are underlined; point at one to see what the OCR read. You can expand the original OCR text for every household.
• The division into households is automatic. Sometimes two families are merged, or a family appears to start at the top of a page when it actually began on the previous one. If in doubt, check the scan.
• The structure is a finding aid. Relationship, age and estimated year of birth were derived automatically and are not a transcription. An age may be attached to the wrong person.
• Ages are often rounded. A striking number of people are 30, 40, 50 or 60. The estimated year of birth (1749 minus the age) is therefore only accurate to within a few years.
• Two layouts. The transcripts are either running text (one paragraph per household) or lists (one person per line). The layout of each volume was detected automatically and not checked by hand. The 28 list volumes were re-read column by column.

How the text was processed, and how its reliability was measured, is described on the Method page.

Searching

• Fuzzy search (the default) matches on sound and spelling. This is usually the most useful option, because names had no fixed spelling in the 18th century and the OCR misreads letters. A search for 'Büning' also finds 'Büninck' and 'Bünninck', but sometimes also similar-looking different names such as 'Brüning'. Always check whether it is the same family. The slider sets how strict the search is.
• Exact search looks for exactly what you type, also inside words: 'merinck' finds Almerinck and Ahlmerinck. Use it when fuzzy search gives too many results. Minimum three characters.
• Both methods search the corrected text and the original OCR text, so a wrong correction never costs you a result.
• Born c. shows only households with someone whose estimated year of birth falls within that period.

Reporting errors Spotted a reading error or a wrong division? Click 'Suggest a correction' next to the household. No account is needed. Corrections by users are marked separately; the original text is always kept.

Citing In your research, always cite the source itself, not this index. For example: Bistumsarchiv Münster, Status Animarum 1749/50, Ahaus St. Marien (transcript), SAA_AhaM, scan AS_001, via Matricula Online. To mention this index as a finding aid: Status Animarum Münster 1749/50, Gerrit Jan , 2026, https://gerritjan-bit.github.io/status-animarum-1749/

Contact Questions and remarks via the GitHub repository or via the form next to any household.