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General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: danuslave on Sunday 19 July 09 21:33 BST (UK)

Title: Christening girls but not boys?
Post by: danuslave on Sunday 19 July 09 21:33 BST (UK)

I know the records are incomplete but I have found a family where 4 girls are christened, but 3 boys are not - even though they are mixed in with ages and living in the same place.

Is this unusual?

Linda

Title: Re: Christening girls but not boys?
Post by: hughar on Sunday 19 July 09 21:39 BST (UK)

Which records - the Parish Registers or a transcript, or the IGI?  If it's the IGI then there are several unexplained instances of extracted batches containing only girls and not boys.
To be sure you need to check the actual registers.

Title: Re: Christening girls but not boys?
Post by: danuslave on Sunday 19 July 09 21:41 BST (UK)

Thanks hughar.  It is the IGI so that might account for it.  It's not particularly important, just odd.

Linda

Title: Re: Christening girls but not boys?
Post by: eadaoin on Monday 20 July 09 21:13 BST (UK)

could the parents be of different religions?
In one of my lines, the girls were christened Catholic like their mother - I haven't yet found Presbyterian baptisms for the boys.

(great-gran then cheated, and the boys were later baptised Catholic, privately and conditionally). I've often wondered if great-granda knew?

eadaoin

Title: Re: Christening girls but not boys?
Post by: mosiefish on Monday 20 July 09 23:10 BST (UK)

Hi,

Someone on here or another list  ??? (I can`t remember sorry) mentioned that on the IGI  women members transcribed the girls baptisms and men transcribe the boys.  Hence there were often more girls transcribed than boys. 

I did find the following on the wonderful Hugh Wallis site :
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~hughwallis/IGIBatchNumberFAQs.htm#OnlyFemales

Regards,
Mo