I'm a lifelong Baptist, and can trace my Baptist heritage back to the 1600s, so I'm well acquainted with the difference between infant baptism and believers' baptism. I think that might have been what so surprised me when I began finding an occasional adult listed in parish registers in the more remote parts of the American colonies. ....Betty On 9/9/2015 9:58 PM, Rick Van Dusen via wrote: > I've heard of such events, but haven't seen any in my line. What I have > a lot of is baptisms by circuit-riders, and other researchers who > weren't up on that institution assumed these families moved around a lot > (said assumption being debunked by Census and other records which put > family in the same place for 100 years). > > I've seen, IIRC, one woman getting baptized as an adult, and this right > before her wedding. I presume that had something to do with her status > in the church where she wanted to get married and/or the church of her > fiance. > > The difference, though, between infant-baptism traditions and Anabaptist > is that with the Anabaptists one can't predict at all any connection > between birth and baptism, whereas with the infant-baptism one can > presume unless/until there's other evidence. > > In any case, though, a birthdate determined solely by baptism date is > never more than a presumption. We stick with it, however, because it's > often all we have or ever will get. The nice thing about TMG's > Baptism-Tag-in-the-Birth-Group is that we can specify that all we have > is the baptism and still have a "birth" date showing up instead of a blank. > > Rick Van Dusen > > > > On 9/9/2015 7:35 PM, Betty Clay wrote: >> Even in the churches that baptized infants, that baptism date does not >> always come soon after birth. Think of the cases of colonists who lived >> far from churches, towns, and ministers. I found one family in which >> the wife and four children were all baptized on the same day, and had >> been taken to town at considerable inconvenience for the very purpose of >> having them baptized. >> >> >> ....Betty > The TMG archive is found here: http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/index/TMG/ > Instructions on how to subscribe to TMG: http://lists.rootsweb.ancestry.com/index/other/Software/TMG.html > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to TMG-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >