In a message dated 17/12/2007 16:47:13 GMT Standard Time, [email protected] writes: Has anyone come across situations where a child has been baptised twice? Having found a baptism record and then another 4 years later , same name, same parents and address, I would naturally presume the first child had died and a later baby given the same name. But I wonder if there may be instances where this isn't the case and a repeat baptism has taken place??? Thanks Joan Joan: When this topic has arisen before - as it occasionally does - the answer given usually refers to a private baptism having taken place, probably in the parents' house, and owing to the child being too ill to be taken to church and thought unlikely to survive. Later, when the child actually has recovered, he/she is then taken to be "received into church" (the "church" here being not so much the building as the congregation as a fellowship), and both ceremonies have been recorded in the baptism register. Sometimes one comes across a conscientious clerk who marks each baptism, when appropriate, with "Private" or "rec'd into church". There are other possible explanations, however, and one that occurs to me, given that the child was aged four, is that the parents may have wanted to have him/her enrolled at a church school, where proof of baptism was required before admission. Is there any detail that is different between the two entries? If something about the first was not quite kosher - eg the father's name or occupation - then it might have been thought to have made the baptism, or at least the record of it, not good enough, and a "good quality one" might have been desired. Had the first been by a Curate whose qualifications - or whose later activities - were not what they should have been, causing the parents to doubt the validity of his baptisms? However, I would want to make a thorough check for the death or burial of the first child before I was convinced it was not a case of, as you mention, a dead child being replaced by another of the same name. Geoff Nicholson