Beware of Baptism Records

The baptism records kept by the clergy do not necessarily mean it is close to the date of birth. Many times parents in the working class did not have their infants baptisms for two main reasons. First, many infants died at a young as. Secondly, the payments required to the priests were too extravagant for working class families to pay, especially if they had several mouths to feed. A group has put several parish records from various counties onto the web. To browse the records go to http://www.onlineparishclerks.org.uk/. --Gayla Mendenhall