When Kernel was founded in 1765, the municipality, according to church law, belonged to the Catholic parish of Tschonopi, present-day Conoplja. All marriages, baptisms, and deaths were documented in the registers in Tschonopi until July 1767.

The first settlers not only built their houses and tilled the land, they also at the same time erected a small church, which on behalf of the Archbishop, Joseph Battyan of Kalocsa, was consecrated on July 5th, 1767 by the vice-dean of the district of Bacs and pastor Anton Bajalics of Csatalja. The church was named in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Visitation. The Capuchin father Johannes Capistranus Mauer from the convent at Sombor was installed as the administrator. He was fluent in the Moravian, German, and Slavonic languages.

When the parish was established, records began to be kept there. The first book was divided into two parts. In the first part the deaths were recorded, and in the second part the marriages. The very first entry in the thick book on the coarse paper, written with a quill by Father Stefanus Marelich, was a death on July 10th, 1767.

The priests of other nationalities from Sombor made only little effort even to enter the most vital data legibly in the registers.

Until 1796 the surname of the mother was not even mentioned when they made entries for baptisms and deaths. In the case of marriages, they completely omitted any mention of the parents of the bride and the groom. Any indication of a possible place of origin was also completely omitted.

In the year 1785 there was a fire in the rectory. In it the margins of the first 80 pages of Book 1 were so badly damaged that numerous entries of deaths were totally or partially lost. The rest of the yellowed sheets became in part illegible. Thanks to restoration later, the sheets are still bound together even today. Up until 1827 the entries in the register were generally written in textual form. In 1828, for the first time, preprinted forms with columns were introduced. Because insufficient thought had been given to it by the ecclesiastical authorities, from 1828 to 1844, there were sometimes, incomplete entries:

1. In the book for deaths, only the deceased were mentioned by name, but not their parents or spouses.
2. With regard to marriages, only the names of the bride and the bridegroom were entered, without any mention of their parents.

These omissions led to a grave sin of neglect. For the period mentioned, it was necessary to undertake some more or less conjectural reconstruction. A fair degree of accuracy can be relied upon with names occurring rarely. However, it becomes more difficult when the same name with the same age is entered two or three times. The lists for the sacrament of confirmation for 1825 and 1842 in which the parents are mentioned, were helpful in the reconstruction. Also, when a comparison was made with the sponsors for baptism and confirmation, who later, as a rule, acted as witnesses for marriages, it was possible to dispel many uncertainties. Nevertheless, it must be pointed out that, in using this method, mistakes cannot be entirely ruled out. Where the reconstruction is dubious, the names of the parents have been put in square brackets [ ].

The experienced observer will notice that, for whatever reasons, the entries of many deaths were omitted. When one compares the registers for deaths with the entries of the two "funeral associations" which existed in Kernel, the omissions become evident. A simple transfer of the registered cases of deaths from the entries of the funeral associations to The Book of Families does not seem to be justified, since these entries give no indication as to the family of origin of a deceased person. There are entries for people who are known for certain to have moved to other towns and died there. Their names were in the associations register only because their dependants claimed death benefits.

Because there were so many fires in rectories a joint directive was issued by both Church and State in 1825 that at the end of each year two copies of the registers should be made. One of them was deposited in the archives of the archdiocese of Kalocsa, and the other in the Historical Archives in Sr. Karlovci, now in Novi Sad.

Since for the years 1826-1895 only the copy in Kalocsa was available as a source, and since it served as the basis for compiling The Book of Families, mistakes stemming from this source material cannot be ruled out.