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READER STORY
It’s frustrating not to find the baptismal record of an ancestor born before the start of civil registration in 1837, especially if you think you know the when and where of the event. You start to wonder if the baptism took place elsewhere and hope the record will show up some day. Or maybe the event was missed from the parish transcripts you’ve had to rely on in place of the parish register. Or, worst of all, the parish clerk or curate failed to write it in or no baptism took place, leaving you stuck forever.
Whatever, about the best you can do while you wait and hope is to place the ancestor in a local family where name, place and time all combine for a good fit, maybe looking back a generation or two for naming patterns and other clues. Also, burial records for the parish can reveal a lot, such as a child of the same name dying a little earlier and the name getting reused, which happened often.
Author Rebecca’s pen and wash reimagining of the baptism of a ‘base born’ child in the established church
Take my 2GGF…