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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: robweldon on Friday 19 September 25 02:36 BST (UK)
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If a girl gets married in 18th century but then has an affair resulting in several children, is it illegal for these children to be Christened in such a bigamous arrangement? And is it normal for these children to then be multiply Christened on a single day after the death of the original husband?
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Illegitimate children were baptised, so I see no reason why children born of a bigamous relationship would not also be baptised. I'm wondering how you might know that the children were born of an affair in the 1700s, perhaps you know that the husband was elsewhere - prison, war etc? In many cases the baptism register simply says "name" son or daughter of "father's name".
It is also not unusual to have multiple children baptised on the same day - for many different reasons.
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Thank you Maddys52, I have two cases in my tree like this.
This girl was married and had a son, but the son died aged 10, with his mother named with a new surname.
Hence the relationship. Original husband died 2 years later in the same area, and the four children were baptized a month after that. There must be a reason they would not have been baptized earlier.
Regards, Rob
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Maybe if you tell us who you are talking about with dates we can have a look and see what we think
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Slightly off topic but I recently came across a Victorian family of 6 kids, aged 0 to 14, all baptised on the same day.
Zaph
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I've found several lots of whole families of children baptised on same occasions. It happens.
TY
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I have twice found cousins baptised on the same day - not obvious because there were different surnames. But a good excuse for a family party!
Sometimes urban churches had an effort to bring in all the unbaptised children on one day, which resulted in siblings arriving together. I have also found they could be inaccurate in record keeping on these occasions. I had one ten-year old whose birth date was ten years late, brothers with a different mother's forename (no remarriage) and a visiting vicar who wrote the name of his own church at the head of one page, instead of that of the church where he was helping out.
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In my tree I have 3 children baptised on the same day, one aged about 7, one 3 yrs and a baby of several months. Not unusual at all. Recorded as base born of the mother, since the parents weren't actually married (I still can't find out why! My brick wall. They lived together from at least the time of this baptism (1810), had 3 more children (1812-17), but never married. The mother died in 1836).