I found a baptism record (yr 1729) that states: NAME born: ABC, baptism date, at XYZ.
I create birth with ABC as place, leave everything else empty
Then create baptism with date and XYZ as place.
After this all age calculations return ‘unknown’. I know it would calculate when only baptism is present, but would rather not omit the birthplace. We can’t be sure on which date the person was born, anything from the day of the baptism back to many years sometimes. Simply stating ‘before’ just doesn’t feel right. What are your ideas?
Gramps uses baptism date as a fallback when birth date is missing.
If you want to add birth event to have the location, use the baptism date, age calculations will then be the same as not having a birth event. Eventually add a tag to the birth event to indicate, that the birth date is actually the baptism date.
On another thought, since Gramps allow birth event without a date, the age calculation method should treat a birth event without a date the same as no birth event and fallback to the baptism event date (if exists) in stead of returning ‘unknown’.
In those circumstances I use the “bef” (eg bef 1792) for the date of
birth which then identifies it as not known but the benefit I have is I
do not use age calculations at all.
Also I would not make the birth place the same as the baptism place in
some areas there was a tradition of the mother returning to family roots
(ie her mother) to give birth and then having the baptism done when
returning to their normal abode.
phil
Yes, that’s what I originally thought would happen
using before would assume the person wasn’t born on the day it was born (Which is known to happen). In this case the couple lived in a village without a church and had their child baptised in the most nearby church.
But dating (I sometimes check ages to see if I haven’t done anything outrageous) has its merrits.
I can only speak about Denmark in the 16th and 17th centuries, but I assume that conditions were similar in many other countries. At that time many newborn died shortly after their birth. Therefore it was very common to have the newborn child baptised immediately at home, and then maybe a month later (if the child still lived) have the baptism publicated in the church. So for children born in these centuries date of birth and date of baptism is typically very close.
Thanks.
As far as I’m aware of emergency baptisms (as they called home baptisms) were quite rare with protestantism. Which is the majority of my research. Burial of unnamed children (that is those who weren’t baptised) wasn’t uncommon. “Buried a child of John’
One reason for different dates was forced by frequent floodings, when a church went isolated. They often stood on higher ground and became surrounded by the water. Sometimes when they could people went to an other church nearby or just waited for water to drop. (or rented a boat).
I wouldn’t like to assume a birth date close to baptism (even though this is the case in majority)
I am guessing finding baptism records is more common than finding a birth record for a majority of early records. I would add either a note about the birth place in the baptism record or add “Born in…” to its Description field.