Catholic registrations

[MarriedWithChildre]

Members of the Irish Ancestry Branch of Manchester & Lancashire FHS have transcribed details of baptisms, marriages and burials at several Manchester RC churches. MLFHS make them available to purchase on CD. See the bottom of this page on their bookshop site, http://www.rootschat.com/links/0kfp/ and the top of the next.

If you have lots of RC ancestors in Manchester it may be worth considering a purchase.

On the MLFHS membership site http://mlfhs.org.uk/index.php if you go to Online data at the top and then click on the Public Data link, you will see another link for their Catholic Register index. This gives you the opportunity to search the index for a name to find out if that name appears in the records that they have. It will not give you all the details, but will tell you if the name is there or not, and presumably whether it is worth purchasing the relevant CD.

Thanks.  I'll have a look at that.

I have searched for surname Baker baptism 1825 +/- 10, the only Williams came up as 1828 and 1829, both Manchester, St. Mary, Mulberry Street.

A search for surname Harrison baptism 1830 +/- 10 give 1 Catherine 1828, Manchester, St. Mary, Mulberry Street.  The same search for surname Jackson does not find a Catherine.

Searching for the marriage 1860+/- 10 does not give an appropriate result. 

I don't think either of those are the people I'm looking for as I have definite dates of birth for them from the family bible.

Thanks for the time and help you've both given me.  What wonderful, helpful people are on this forum!

[davidrigg3]

I don't really know much about the timings in the RC faith, are children always baptised very soon after birth or could they perhaps wait a few years??

[ReadyDale]

I know his date of birth, date of death and all the census details for every census except 1841, plus I can't find his birth details in the on-line registry.  Were Catholic births not registered centrally? 

From my limited experience, they often seem not to have been.
In my OH's tree, her GG-GrandParents came over from Ireland and married here. In subsequent generations, marriages are in the GRO indexes, as are deaths (I'm guessing because these were harder to avoid), but no births were registered. This was the case from c.1850 when they came over right up to 1915 when the last unregistered birth occured.
(We're visiting the relevent church in two weeks time to try to get the details. They agreed in the end, but were very reluctant, citing Data Protection Act!!!!)

[MarriedWithChildre]

I don't really know much about the timings in the RC faith, are children always baptised very soon after birth or could they perhaps wait a few years??

I don't think they'd wait long - don't want a baby's soul to end up in purgatory for all eternity!