Wilkes_ml
05-09-2013, 5:20 PM
Prior to civil registration, we need to look to the parish baptism registers to find baptism entries to provide us with evidence of parentage.
However sometimes our ancestor wasn't baptised in the parish they say they were born (from the census)
In the late 1700s and early 1880s infant mortality was high, and it was pretty much guaranteed that your ancestor was likely to have a sibling buried. So use either Find My Past National Burial Index (or if you still have an old version on disc that still works on the PC) search for burials and narrow the search down to +/- 10 years either side of your ancestors estimated birth year, and if you have a place of birth, use Parish Locator to give you a list of parishes within a few miles and see which parishes appear on both lists.
Your ancestor was likely to have been baptised in one of the parishes that appears in both the burial list and the parish locator list.
Secondly, not all children were baptised as babies, so don't forget to keep searching the registers up until they would have married.
Thirdy, Go back to the same parish register and search it a second time another day. It may seem pointless, but you may have missed it the first time as I have just realised I have done! doh.
I searched for my ancestor from an age given in the 1841 Census, but I knew to give or take +/- 5 years. he always said he was born in Rayne, Essex.
I was sure I had searched the microfiche I had bought a few years ago, and had not found his baptism, so I've just searched every parish around Rayne that have come up on both lists via method outlined above, then I thought I'd just double check Rayne again....and there he was...he'd been there all along! I don't know how I missed it the first time. Now I'm starting to wonder if I actually looked at the register in the first place, as I usually make a note of all searches and comment on negative results, and I can't see any note in my records to say I'd searched Rayne at all :crazy:
However sometimes our ancestor wasn't baptised in the parish they say they were born (from the census)
In the late 1700s and early 1880s infant mortality was high, and it was pretty much guaranteed that your ancestor was likely to have a sibling buried. So use either Find My Past National Burial Index (or if you still have an old version on disc that still works on the PC) search for burials and narrow the search down to +/- 10 years either side of your ancestors estimated birth year, and if you have a place of birth, use Parish Locator to give you a list of parishes within a few miles and see which parishes appear on both lists.
Your ancestor was likely to have been baptised in one of the parishes that appears in both the burial list and the parish locator list.
Secondly, not all children were baptised as babies, so don't forget to keep searching the registers up until they would have married.
Thirdy, Go back to the same parish register and search it a second time another day. It may seem pointless, but you may have missed it the first time as I have just realised I have done! doh.
I searched for my ancestor from an age given in the 1841 Census, but I knew to give or take +/- 5 years. he always said he was born in Rayne, Essex.
I was sure I had searched the microfiche I had bought a few years ago, and had not found his baptism, so I've just searched every parish around Rayne that have come up on both lists via method outlined above, then I thought I'd just double check Rayne again....and there he was...he'd been there all along! I don't know how I missed it the first time. Now I'm starting to wonder if I actually looked at the register in the first place, as I usually make a note of all searches and comment on negative results, and I can't see any note in my records to say I'd searched Rayne at all :crazy: