Family Historian User Group

My current ideas as to how to deal with baptisms are to have the following items that can be entered:

Select Individual, Father (optional), Mother (optional)

Baptism Date: This would be recorded in the baptism event (option to use christening event instead) and also within any of the following events that might also be recorded: birth, occupation, residence

Date of Birth: recorded in a birth event for the person being baptised.

Place of Birth: recorded in a birth event for the person being baptised. Difficult to know this with most baptisms though I've tended to assume that its the same as the residence of the parents. I suppose I can just leave this for the user to enter if they choose.

Baptism Location Place: recorded in baptism event

Baptism Location Address: recorded in baptism event

Baptism Age (age of child when baptised): - recorded in baptism event

Father Occupation: recorded in occupation event for the father

Father Residence: recorded in residence event for the father

Mother Occupation: recorded in occupation event for the father (Edit: I mean mother of course, thanks Chris)

Mother Residence: recorded in residence event for the mother (would default to same as father)

Name of priest/vicar who performed ceremony: would go into source text.

As with census entries in A.S. there will be a source text box to transcribe the baptism entry with an 'Auto' button to try to help with this. There will also be 'reference' and 'Other Info' boxes available. Images could also be linked.

I'm aware there are various other items of information that could be recorded in a baptism but I don't know how vital they are. The above suggestions would allow the complete recording of 99.9% of the baptisms I've ever looked at. Other less common items could be added afterwards using Family Historian once the key information was added in A.S.

Does this seem to meet your requirements? Anything vital I've forgotten?

ID:4665

'Mother Occupation: recorded in occupation event for the father '

typo?

Off the top of my head I can think of Religion and the legitamacy of the child/married state of the mother. Possibly both overkill. but the latter does seem to get mentioned a lot in transcribed parish registers

ChrisM said:
...
Off the top of my head I can think of Religion and the legitamacy of the child/married state of the mother. Possibly both overkill. but the latter does seem to get mentioned a lot in transcribed parish registers

These would be 'nice to have' but not essential, as far as I am concerned.

I can see that it would be possible to record the married/non-married state of the mother (and father, if mentioned) but how would the illegitimacy of the child be recorded? Would it just be inferred?

I have one case where a child has been baptized twice, once on his own then with three siblings, will the set up catch this and allow me to enter the second entry ?

An individual can have more than one baptism event in FH (standard GEDCOM 5.5) just as an individual can have more than one census event.  I can think of no reason why Ancestral Sources should not be able to handle multiple baptisms, just as it handles multiple censuses.

+ Setting of a 'Baptism' flag in a similar way to census' ?

I currently have flags for birth cert, baptism entry, marriage cert and death cert in FH and set them manually when I enter details from these sources, (and have linked images of the source documents).

David

Legitimacy could be useful. A Catholic Parish Register I have referred to recently actually has a column for legitimacy (recorded as 'legal' or left blank).

Would the name of the minister carrying out the baptism be useful too? (The Catholic PR I referred to above has a column for this too.)

In addition to the parish register, a common way of recording baptism in Scotland used to be for the minister to endorse the child's birth certificate with the date and parish of baptism and his signature. Conventional baptism certificates were usually (but not always) issued as well.

In some of the Catholic Baptism registers names of godparents are given - would they be associated persons in the same way as marriage witnesses?

Irene

Your current thinking looks good to me and would cover all that I need - Thanks[smile]

In Church of Scotland Old Parish Registers, you sometimes find witnesses listed. The same mechanism that handles godparents would also work here, it's just the text to describe them that would need to be different.

(The Church of Scotland doesn't really do godparents, although most ministers welcome family friends/relatives standing with the parents at a baptism. Instead, the whole congregation stands to promise to support the child in his/her Christian development.

The function of witnesses used to be to witness to the promises made by the parents and to speak for the standard of their Christian lifestyle. This rather scary role has now been dropped in the CofS!)

I hope I am not too late to influence the development of Ancestral Sources Baptism events and subsequent events. Most of what you propose is excellent, although I would prefer GRO BMD events to come further up your priority list, as they would support the existing Census events, because they cover a similar time frame from 1837 onwards.

Presumably the Source Type will be selectable as an Option in a similar way to Census events e.g. Baptism Record, Birth Certificate, etc.

May I also request that the Auto-Text feature creates the Text From Source using Labels that can be selected using the Family Historian GetLabelledText function. The following is an example of Labels for a Baptism event:-

Baptism Name:    Harriet Nicholl
Baptism Date:     10 September 1843
Baptism Place:     St.George, Stepney
Baptism Address:     etc...
Baptism Age:
Birth Date:
Birth Place:
Birth Address:
Name of Father:
His Occupation:
His Place:
His Address:
Name of Mother:
Her Occupation:
Her Place:
Her Address:
Priest/Vicar:

I believe this layout fits the Text From Source pane in the Source Record quite well, and as I said, can be processed by the GetLabelledText function.

It would be useful if the Labels could be chosen by the user in a Baptism Template similar to Census Templates.

Similar Auto-Text to Text From Source Labels would apply to GRO BMD events, e.g. Birth Certificate:-

Certificate:  BXCE 521265
District:          etc...
Sub-district:
County:
Entry No:
When:
Where:
Name:
Sex:
Father:
Mother:
Occupation:
Informant:
Residence:
Registered:
Registrar:

Here the Labels are derived from the GRO Birth Certificate headings.

I thank you for all the time and effort you have invested in Ancestral Sources, and look forward to the planned enhancements. Well done!

Mike Tate

My idea for dealing with baptisms and the other sources is to have a number of potential templates that users can use or create for themselves, therefore the GetLabelledText could be used by setting up a template similar to the one you suggest. There would also need to be the option to miss the label row out if the value was empty.

Cheers

Nick

I've recently found several baptisms that were carried out 'privately'(with a date) and then followed by a later date when the child was 'entered into the church' or 'entered into the congregation'. Just thought I'd make mention in case this could influence 'the final product'.[rolleyes]

It really won't be possible to deal with every single possible option. I think it will have to be accepted that occasionally you'll come across a baptism that needs extra info adding afterwards in FH.

As a matter of interest how are you recording these 2 separate dates? 2 baptisms?