[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Finding missing Lutheran records

[Karl Krueger]

At this moment I am trying to find out where I could find some important birth/marriage/death records. Since I have a good idea of all births/christenings recorded in the Lutheran Lublin church archives it is clear that many/most of the Lutherans, particularly prior to 1850, are not in those records. I have ancestors that were among the first settlers of the first German community northeast of Lublin (Michelsdorf starting in 1822) but the Lublin archives has almost nothing of these settlers in the 1820s-30s and just a little in the 40s. 
 
Does anyone have more experience on where I might find these records? Below are some possibilities I considered and I welcome anyone to comment with more experience in this type of search. 
 
1) Perhaps they went to a Catholic church to record births. I checked the two closest churches I found in FHL films (both were Greek Catholic) but no luck. In this area of Poland Greek churches seem to be present among small towns while the Roman Catholic churches tended to be in larger towns/cities.
 
2) Would they be more prone to go to a Roman Catholic church to report births? The nearest Roman Catholic churches (at least in FHL films) were not that much closer than Lublin itself.
 
3) Were they required to have their births recorded? Is it possible that these Lutherans slipped by the system and no records were ever produced?
 
4) Maybe records were produced but they have been destroyed. If this is the case then it is not likely that these records were ever in Lublin as their archives seem to be rather complete on christenings that were reported in Lublin. By 1851 it seems that Michelsdorf is included in the Lublin archives, but even in the late 1840s-early 50s the Michelsdorf data in Lublin appears rather incomplete.

		
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