Could Samuel Knighton have been baptised as an adult?

[JAKnighton]

For a while now I have had a brick wall in my Knighton ancestry. My earliest known Knighton ancestor is Samuel Knighton, who appears in a marriage to Elizabeth Whaples on 29 Nov 1773 in Winwick.

With no age given for either of them in the record I haven't been able to find a definite match for a birth or christening for Samuel.

But then I noticed a christening for a Samuel Knighton on 21 Nov 1773 in Winwick, just days before the marriage of Samuel & Elizabeth. I noticed it before but discounted it as I assumed this was the baptism of an infant, who of course would be too young to be married eight days later...

But then I thought; what if this was an adult baptism?

Was Samuel perhaps of a different religion and therefore had to be baptised to marry Elizabeth?

Does this mean that I have the names for Samuel's parents, which appear to be John and Mary in the record?

Is there any way of finding out if this is an adult baptism?

[findem]

Hi,

I don't pretend to be an expert on this topic but the same thing happened to a couple of my ancestors.  An archivist explained that if someone was baptised a short time before their marriage it was usually a case of "or else!", being baptised was a prerequisite to being married in a church.

Regards.

[bedfordshire boy]

Does this mean that I have the names for Samuel's parents, which appear to be John and Mary in the record?

Is there any way of finding out if this is an adult baptism?

Have you checked the parish register to see if there's any additional information? If the answer is yes and neither states adult baptism then it's impossible to know for sure, and as a consequence if you can't be sure that you have the right Samuel then you can't be sure that you have the right parents. Have you gone through the parish register to try to see if there was more than one Knighton family in the parish baptising children at about the same time? Or if there's the death of a Samuel which might eliminate the one whose baptism you've found. Do the witnesses to the marriage provide any clues.

[JAKnighton]

Does this mean that I have the names for Samuel's parents, which appear to be John and Mary in the record?

Is there any way of finding out if this is an adult baptism?

Have you checked the parish register to see if there's any additional information? If the answer is yes and neither states adult baptism then it's impossible to know for sure, and as a consequence if you can't be sure that you have the right Samuel then you can't be sure that you have the right parents. Have you gone through the parish register to try to see if there was more than one family in the parish? Or if there's the death of a Samuel which might eliminate the one whose baptism you've found.

I will need to visit the Huntingdonshire Archives and view the original records to find out. I'm relying on FamilySearch records and online transcripts at the moment.

Interestingly, I did find transcripts of children of John & Mary who were baptised shortly after Samuel which also correspond with marriages that take place quite soon afterwards.

[Lily M]

 There's only one month between the baptisms of John and Mary.  So they certainly look like adult, pre-marriage, baptisms.