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There is no such place as "Tedious"! However, it looks as if you are talking about Lillias Stewart, daughter of Charles Stewart, ground officer (i.e., essentially "estate manager") at Balblair in the Parish of Resolis and his wife Janet Hossack. Lillias was baptised on 19 December 1759.

Quote from: eilthireach on Friday 30 September 22 00:55 BST (UK)

"it is far more likely that the child was baptised, but the baptism wasn't recorded, or the record has not survived.". No, it is not "far more likely"! Yes, it's perfectly possible that the session clerk omitted to record the event, but you simply cannot make a statement like that. You just can't!

The elders and minister of the parish would inquire into why children hadn't been presented for baptism. In the Old Statistical Account, ministers comment on gaps in baptism registers and make the point that not all baptisms had been recorded. During the period when there was a 3d tax on entries in the baptism register, ministers noted that it put some people off having a record made, it did not put them off having their children baptised. In the 17th and early 18th centuries, when failure to have your child baptised would mean being summoned before the kirk session, and referred to the presbytery if you refused, there are many unrecorded baptisms in the registers. You also see a rush of parents in 1854 (because of the coming of statutory birth registration) to have earlier baptisms (sometimes much earlier) recorded in the kirk register.

Let's not make a mountain out of a molehill over this. The point I made was absolutely valid, whatever picture the authors (ministers) of the Old Statistical Account sought to paint as characteristic of the whole of Scotland historically and in their own time, I'm afraid the church did not have such power over the population of Scotland, especially in those areas where, later on, the people eventually joined the Free Church of Scotland and that became the predominant church in that area. It would simply have been completely impractical - impossible in fact - for the Church to pursue people, especially in the big cities and remote landward areas. Today and in the past, not everyone attended church. Records in some parts of Scotland didn't even begin until the early nineteenth century and no church would have had the policing powers needed to ensure that every child was baptised.

The more you search in the historical records, the more instances you'll find of parents who didn't - or weren't always able to - get all of their children baptised. Circumstances didn't always come together to make it happen. Maybe family circumstances were just not right at the appropriate time, maybe the minister wasn't available when they were thinking about it and then they just didn't follow up on it. I had a look online in the OPRs within the county (using P (Name starts with, so that it would pick up a Patrick, and Duncan (Father) and Ch (Mother)) and then all counties, but nothing came up, so it looks as if your Peter's birth/baptism was one of those that just slipped through the cracks.

You should -always- bear in mind, that the age someone gives is what they thought they were. Even if the person had been told the date of their birthday, they weren't always great at mental arithmetic. People didn't celebrate birthdays in those days. They had more immediate concerns than something like that - a roof over their head, food, finances, and, if they derived their living from the land, the weather, the seasons, and certainly not birthdays ...

For all I know, it may still be. That is quite different, however, from a Registration District.