Genealogy Chat

I am grappling with the identity and parentage of three children who were baptised a second time when in their teens - apparently as a device to 'regularise' the use of the surname of the man they were brought up by. This happened in the early 19th C. I am advised that to baptise a child a second time was 'highly irregular'. Please can anyone confirm this?
David

It is generally accepted by the mainstream churches that baptism is a once and for all event - once baptised, you stay baptised.

However, going back to the dates you mention, it seems to be quite common for some folk to have their children baptised a second time, usually to qualify for poor relief in a different parish. I guess there will have been those clergy who realised what was going on and those who would turn the proverbial blind eye because of the circumstances.

I've also wondered if some parents back then couldn't remember whether there children had been baptised at a young age. Then one or more children would be looking for work, and employers often required evidence of baptism ......

.......... so one or more of the children were baptised a second time!

If you google baptism more than once there are several sites, but they all say that baptism as an understanding adult can only be done once.

Christening as a baby doesn't count, and some Christian sects don't accept baptisms done by others.

I have a puzzle in my family in that my great-grandfather and his siblings, children of a strongly Methodist father, were all baptised in the local C of E church when in their teens. I have been wondering whether it was something to do with the law at the time - mid 19c.

Andysmum ............

I have a similar puzzle in OH's family ......

....... the furthest that I have got back in his family is to 1767 when his 4x gt grandfather was born in Yorkshire, to a family that was well-known to be Quakers and suffered discrimination as a result, moving back and forth between Lancashire and Yorkshire as discrimination got worse in one place.

I can't prove it because I can't yet find the link (nor can anyone else), but I think one of 4xgt grandfather's relatives was on the 2nd Fleet to Pennsylvania in 1682.

However, 4xgt grandfather, his siblings, putative father, and children were all baptised, married and buried in their local CofE churches ......... even though he himself was well known to be a devout Quaker who preached at Brigg Flatts Meeting House in Yorkshire until his death in 1842!

The most intriguing thing was to discover that my daughter's name can be found in those very early records of the family, the first mention of it being about 1600.

I chose her name because I had seen and liked it in a book back in the early 1960s, well before we even began to go out together, only to discover from my f-i-l after she was born that he had a gt aunt xxxxxxxxx ................ and of course I discovered much later how connected that name was with the family!

Sylvia, in my case, going further back up the same line, my 4xgt-grandfather was a methodist convert and was even stoned for his beliefs. Despite this, he and all his family were baptised, married and buried in the nearest C of E church, according to the law at the time.

This church was about 3 miles away, and after the methodists built their own church, in the village, practically the whole population became methodist overnight!! This so upset the C of E high-ups that they built a church in the village pronto. :-)

The thing that puzzles me is that the methodist church opened in 1807 and their registers go back to not long after, so why were great-grandfather, born 1840, his sister, born 1842 and the youngest, born 1850, all baptised in the C of E church in 1851?

I doubt I'll ever know. :-(

same thing for me ............. why did they preach in the Quaker church but have all the ceremonies in the CofE?

OH's maternal grandfather was a Welsh Wesleyan minister, ordained after he'd already served an apprenticeship as a cabinet maker. His 3 children used to slid into church on certain occasions so they wouldn't have to sign the pledge. He and OH's grandmother married in a Welsh Calvinist Methodist Chapel in Manchester. I've gathered that his family was Methodist, but am not sure about his wife's.


OH's parents also married in a Methodist .......... the St David Welsh Methodist Chapel in Salford. F-i-l was not Methodist (he came from the Quaker line!), and they then became active in the CofE church .................... and m-i-l enjoyed her little nip :-)



If only they had known how curious we are, they would have left notes for us :-D

some people were just so sloppy!

my great-grandfather was baptised in a batch with younger siblings, all aged 0 to 7 years, in the 1850s.

eldest child, born well before that batch, I have no idea ... no record of birth or baptism

next child baptised at about age 16, 3 years after the batch of young ones, in a different location

third child baptised apparently in contemplation of death at about age 30 ... absolutely no idea why the older ones weren't baptised when the younger ones were, or why the first and third ones weren't baptised as teenagers at the later date when the second one was.

all of them seem to have been baptised after the parents were estranged ... and I'm just not sure of the real parentage of the youngest batch ...

children's births (except that first one) all properly registered, and all the baptisms show the same parents as on the birth registrations, but no marriage of the parents ...

all were baptised CofE but my great-grandparent married in a registry office the second time after being widowed very young and was Methodist as an adult

only one other of the lot of them survived and had 2 children who survived (and they scattered to the winds) so there are no other clues

Sometimes people just seem to have gone wildly off in random directions as the wind blew!

Cynthia's comment about poor relief is interesting and it could have been a factor in that family if the husband/father had deserted ... very interesting and I'll think about that!

Granny's brother was baptised as a baby in the CofE. Then he converted to Catholicism and was baptised into the Roman Catholic Church in his early 20's. His bride to be was RC, so I assume it was for that reason.

I have failed to find baptisms for a number of my family, where I would expect them to have been baptised, so maybe the records are missing, or not yet transcribed, or badly transcribed.

It can be frustrating!