In a message dated 05/08/2007 12:12:31 GMT Daylight Time, [email protected] writes: I have put a lot of postings on the site looking for the birth reg and Baptism of John Robson born 1840 as yet no luck, what I am wondering is how rare is it for a child to be neither Registered at Birth and also not baptised, when all his other siblings are baptised being born before 1837 and Regsitered being born after 1837, what am I missing? Completely baffled. As far as John Robson is concerned you don't seem to be missing anything - as long as he was baptised/registered as John Robson. I think it has alreay been mentioned that he may have been registered or baptised as, say, John William Robson or even as William John Robson (for "William" substitute any other first name!). However, in a case such as this we should also consider the possibility that the surname may not have been what you think. Perhaps he was born before his parents managed to marry. In that case he may have been registered and baptised with his mother's maiden surname, or a variant of it. Another possibility is that the registrar and/or the parish clerk either mis-heard "Robson" or else were given a variant of it anyway, and he could have been registered/baptised as Robinson or Robertson or Robeson. I suppose that what I am saying is that you should consider any possible variant of any of the individual pieces of information concerned with his baptism and/or registration. For baptisms, have you considered every possible nonconformist denomination, as well as the C of E? Some of them had chapels in Sunderland, rather than in a relatively out of the way place such as Hetton le Hole! For others you may find it more productive to look at Durham City. Geoff Nicholson