YOu mention adult baptisms just before marriages. Some Methodist congregations did and do baptise adults rather than children. Not as much as the Baptists, but it happens. And in my own Methodist church these days, the only babies who are baptised are from families who dont attend the church, the families from church dont baptise, they have service of thanksgiving and await adulthood for the child to be baptised by total immersion. And there are plenty of very old people for whom this was the case and their parents and grandparents before them, from the conversations we have around the hired birthing pool in which we baptise people Liz > >Hello and thanks to all for your thoughts. (They go some way towards a >firm conclusion on my part and convincing another descendent of the same >family. I will be forwarding all!) > >The registers concerned appear to be very complete but closer acquaintance >tells a different story. Particularly for the period around 1785 give or >take a few years. And of course, my ancestor was born, and not recorded in >that year. Aware of the levy on register entries I have thought that this >may be the reason, but I also strongly suspect the growing influence of >Wesleyan Methodism. (A few late baptisms just before a marriage seem to >confirm this.) > >Another question, if this is the right place (?), published works give >extracts from the Bishops Visitations for 1804 and the minister states >that >there is a preacher of the itinerant kind and that assemblies were not >large, but I suspect he may have been deliberately underestimating the >influence of non-conformity in the parish. Wesley is reputed (though I have >not found evidence in his journals) to have preached in the town and >Methodism was strong until very recent times. Could the minister have >fudged >the truth? > >Barbara > >Hello All, > >My impression from my own research is that baptismal dates are at best no >more than a rough guide to birth dates, Some families seem to be baptised >in clusters, others baptised late, sometimes very late..Some, in large >families, even seem to have been missed. Who knows why? There is a >particular form of service in the Book of Common Prayer for "The >ministration of baptism to such as are of riper years"..There were two >periods when a 3d duty was levied on register entries, the later beginning >1st Oct 1783 and continuing, writing from memory, until 1794. Whilst >arrangements were in place for the parish to pay the fee for those too poor >to pay, it seems to have had the effect, unsurprisingly, of discouraging >baptisms. Not everyone, even in those supposedly religous days arranged >for >their children to be baptised, and no doubt even those that did could have >found the journey to church in a large rural parish a matter for some >consideration and, in bad weather, of delay. Some would waited till caught >by the parson, others could well have flirted with, or committed themselves >to, non-conformism which had its own baptismal arrangements. Non-conformism >was strong in 18th and 19th cc. The world was different then, and in my >opinion, we should beware of making assumptions. > >Jim Halsey > > > > > > > > >==== OLD-ENGLISH Mailing List ==== >THREADED archives for OLD-ENGLISH: >http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index?list=OLD-ENGLISH >