Family and Burial Register Data from Lutheran Missions in Colonial Northern Tanzania

The historical demography dataset was compiled through the digitization of family and burial registers archived at nine former mission parishes in the dioceses of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (Northern, Meru, and Pare) in August 2025. The registers were filled by German and Tanzanian missionaries of the Leipzig Mission who opened the first mission station in 1893 in the Kilimanjaro region. The photographs were transcribed at Utrecht University. The family registers contain 6,726 birth records from seven churches covering the period 1881–1967. The burial registers contain 12,715 death records from nine churches for the period 1904–1965. The registers were kept in German, English, Kiswahili and Chagga.