W S wrote: > Have just come across a possible Ancestor's baptism record on Ancestry which has no mother showing??? It gives John BAGGALEY > son of William & Long Lane. Dad is a turner. > Source Citation: London Metropolitan Archives, Saint Luke, Old Street, Register of baptisms, P76/LUK, Item 010 > > > What circumstances could there be for not showing the mother other > than forgetting to enter it later perhaps ....... I've often come across registers where a parent's name is missing. It's often because whoever made up the registers committed the information to memory which then failed when the register was made up which could be some while after the event depending on how busy the parish was. It could also be that the note made of the event was illegible to the person making up the register later for some reason. See if you can find a child born to the same couple either side of the entry to find out the name of the mother and hope the child wasn't the youngest or that one mother had died and the father remarried in the interim. -- Charani (UK) OPC for Walton, Greinton and Clutton, SOM Asst OPC for Ashcott and Shapwick, SOM http://wsom-opc.org.uk http://www.savethegurkhas.co.uk/

On 23 September 2010 22:16, Charani <charani.b@gmail.com> wrote: > W S wrote: > > Have just come across a possible Ancestor's baptism record on Ancestry > which has no mother showing??? It gives John BAGGALEY > > son of William & Long Lane. Dad is a > turner. > > Source Citation: London Metropolitan Archives, Saint Luke, Old Street, > Register of baptisms, P76/LUK, Item 010 > >t > > > > What circumstances could there be for not showing the mother other > > than forgetting to enter it later perhaps ....... > > I´ve been trawling through parish registers for longer than I care to remember and they are often incorrect, badly noted and often have many years of registration simply not recorded. One has to look at the way the job of local priest happened. It was nothing like modern times - i.e. get the job because of your calling or beliefs. The parish incumbents were often the second or third sons of local lords of the manor. The first son inherited from the father, the second went into the army and the third became a priest. Didn´t matter what he thought, that was what he was expected to do. He could have been t dotally incompetant and disinterested in the job, and the registers will reflect that Diane