Dr. Hess's years of dedication to this project have created a ground-breaking genealogical series and a must-have for those with Lutheran ancestors in the Philadelphia region. Until this series, these records had never been fully translated and thus were unavailable to researchers. This is the fifth in a five-volume series that Dr. Hess has translated from the original German. The first three volumes cover baptisms, volume four covers marriages and confirmations, and volume five covers burials from 1745 through 1800. "During the 1740s and 1750s, an average of about forty burials per year was registered by the Philadelphia German Lutheran congregation; then between 1759 and 1800 the number of burials was higher, usually between a hundred and two hundred each year. Altogether, between 1745 and the end of the 18th Century, a total of more than eight thousand persons were buried by the Philadelphia German Lutheran parish. All these burial entries were recorded in Books I, II, III, IV, V, and VII of the original register and are translated/transcribed here in this volume." The amount of information for each decedent in the original record varies greatly. Therefore, the records in this volume may include any combination of the following: the name of the decedent and burial date, date of birth or age at death, the place of birth, names of parents, year of immigration, date(s) of marriage(s), name(s) of spouse(s), number of children from each marriage and how many survived beyond the decedents death, decedent's trade or occupation, decedent's street address or suburb of Philadelphia, and any remarkable events in the decedent's life. A full-name index adds to the value of this work.
