Dear Patrice, I am not an authority on nineteenth century Catholic practices. However, I was raised in the Catholic Church. The most important consideration in choosing godparents was that they would make sure that the children were raised in the Catholic faith. Our godparents were mostly aunts and uncles. Although there were seven of us this was no particular problem since my father came from a family of eleven children. (My mother's family were protestants.) One of my uncles was killed in WW II, but that still left plenty of godparent material. By the time my baby sister, Maureen, was born my brother and I were nearly grown and we were her godparents. However, there was actually no requirement that the godparents be relatives. My parents were a litlte neighbor boys godparents since they didn't apparently have any family who were close. Gail in MO (oppossum)