David Chambers wrote: I have someone who was baptised in All Saints Springfield on the 27 March 1818?and then at the First Meeting House in Baddow Lane on the 6 June 1819, why would this be. Before the government's registration system was created from 1837, evidence of births and/or baptisms (and also marriages and death or burials) was dependent on the events being recorded in the records of the Church of England and some other institutions. In 1812 a standard form was introduced to record the date of baptism, child’s Christian name, surname, parent’s Christian names, address, occupation of father and the name of the person conducting the ceremony. This followed the passing of an "Act for the better regulating and preserving Parish and other Registers of Birth, Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, in England" (Rose's Act). The purpose of the act gives some idea as to why someone would be baptised CofE, namely that "amending the Manner and Form of keeping and of preserving Registers of Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials of His Majesty's Subjects in the several Parishes and Places in England, will greatly facilitate the Proof of Pedigrees of Persons claiming to be entitled to Real or Personal Estates, and otherwise of great public Benefit and Advantage" from http://rwguide.rootsweb.ancestry.com/lesson17.htm - a useful precis of some of the issues and how some people managed them : Being a nonconformist was not just a religious matter. It also involved a lack of legal status for one's children, since they were not baptized in the established church. In 1743, a group representing Baptists, Independents and Presbyterians, set up a register for the births of their children at the Dissenters Library. This register was open to any parent who was willing to pay a fee to register their children's births. For the family historian the information given is unusually detailed. It includes name of parents, the exact place and date of birth and the name of the maternal grandfather. Probably due to the fees, the register was not a success though. In 1769 it contained only 309 entries. However, gradually the nonconformists ministers began to deposit their register books with this library, and private registrations increased. By 1837 nearly 50,000 births had been registered. These records are now housed in the Public Record Office and the names also appear in the Family History Library's International Genealogical Index (IGI). For the families of some of my forebears the male children were baptised CofE, female children recorded in Dr Williams (the Dissenters) Library. After 1837 they seemed to rely on civil registration. The First meeting House in Baddow Lane was Congregationalist I would conclude that the first baptism was for legal purposes and the second indicated that the family were members of the Congregationalist church. Regards Anne