RootsChat.Com
Old Photographs, Recognition, Handwriting Deciphering => Handwriting Deciphering & Recognition => Topic started by: samalexander on Friday 21 December 18 00:29 GMT (UK)
-
Can anyone help to decipher this record?
I know the parents are Alexander Hay and Agnes Downie and the daughter Elisabeth was born in Birkenshaw, North Lanarkshire. But I can’t make out the first part(nearest the bottom left hand corner of the page), it starts with “By...”
-
Could it start with -By the omission of the ? :-\
Kay
Added - I see that the page was actually 1795 so maybe the baptism was added at a later date
-
Agree with Kay. Also, could the next word be March <something>
Gadget
-
By ommission of th[e] [ ] Parents
-
Don't know if this helps, but I pushed the words apart to make them easier to see.
-
By ommission of th[e] [ ] Parents
I've just looked at it in more detail and see that the long S in omission is extending into the word below so, excluding that letter, I also think it's Parents.
Add - also the first th/the could relate to the date line - 28th or 20th. The transcript on SP and FS has the date as 28th
-
I'm not familiar with Scottish records but I'm pretty sure that parents were not responsible for putting entries into Parish records, so why blame them for the omission? I think it is more likely to be a name or title of the Church official but I can offer no suggestions :(
Colin
-
It is unusual but it could be that the parents moved in the intervening 2 years, maybe:
Here's a snip with the tail of long s removed.
Gadget
-
I agree that the first th goes with the date. The rest is "By ommission of th[e] Parents"
Baptisms usually took place in peoples houses and the Session Clerk (usually the parish schoolmaster) would not attend with the register. Occasionally the minister kept a notebook with rough details, which were then written up in the register, but usually fathers went to the Clerk to have entries made. Not everyone bothered. About 1784 (if I remember correctly) a 3d tax was introduced on the registration of baptisms, so that might also induce amnesia. It is quite common to find the baptisms of several children from a family entered together, the previous unrecorded ones being entered along with the latest one. In 1854 especially, the year before statutory registration began, parish registers often contain groups of baptisms which had not been recorded at the proper time
-
The 3d taxes on baptism entries has really messed up my research on KKD ancestors. I know when they died and the age given at death, so I can get a rough estimate of birth date, but no entries were made in the OPRs until the early 1790s, when they took the younger children to wherever the kirk sessions was meeting.
The tax was for entry in the register rather than the baptism itself.