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Birth-baptism intervals (article)

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  • Birth-baptism intervals (article)

    I was idly 'surfing the Web' (can't remember what for now) and came across an interesting article in the FamilySearch Wiki (which I didn't know existed).

    The URL is https://wiki.familysearch.org/en/Bir...ily_historians.

    An excerpt:
    Evidence strongly suggests that during the sixteenth- and much of the seventeenth-centuries, parents did indeed baptize in haste. As such, family historians working on the early modern period can usually assume that any date they uncover either in a parish register or on the International Genealogical Index (IGI) which specifies baptism will normally be no more than a week after birth. However, studies have shown than from the mid-seventeenth-century onwards the interval between birth and baptism became longer and longer. In one study, for example, in the period 1650-1700 it took 14 days before 75% of children in the register were baptized, while between 1771-89 and 1791-1812 the corresponding period was 38 and 64 days respectively. Just as importantly, the same figures for the parishes which saw the longest intervals for these three periods are 27, 155 and 444 days. A further complicating factor is the growing appearance of ‘baptism parties’ or ‘family baptisms’ in the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-centuries. In these instances parents waited to baptize all of their children in one go.
    I thought this might be of interest to others as well.

    Tim
    "If we're lucky, one day our names and dates will appear in our descendants' family trees."

  • #2
    Thank you for this Tim, I have added it to the list of other wikis in our own Wiki.

    Caroline
    Caroline's Family History Pages
    Meddle not in the affairs of Dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.

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    • #3
      I'm reading "The Trbes of Britain" at the moment and have got to the Norman Conquests. Pre-conquest Anglo-Saxons used to baptise their children to endorse the already-given names and there was a great variety of names.

      Post-conquest, early baptisms came in with the child being named after godparents or saints and the pool of names chosen became much smaller. So its William the Conqueror's fault that our ancestors are called Mary, John, Thomas and Susan instead of Ethelfrith and Eggbert.
      ~ with love from Little Nell~
      Chowns, Dunt, Emms, Mealing, Purvey & Smoothy

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      • #4
        I think one of the main reasons for the change in interval was the fall in the likelihood of the baby dying unbaptised in the meantime.
        KiteRunner

        Every five years or so I look back on my life and I have a good... laugh"
        (Indigo Girls, "Watershed")

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        • #5
          Another reason for the rapid baptism of a newborn, was the widely held belief that the Devil was constantly trawling for unbaptised souls to claim as his own.

          My MIL was sticking firmly to this belief in the 1960s!

          OC

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