'Adult' Baptisms

[oleonepace]

Hi All!

My gx6 grandfather was born in a rural village in Kent, England  around 1718.
He was baptised in 1760 in church in Milstead as an 'adult' and he died one month later.

Was it unusual to be baptised late in life in those days? I always understood that religion formed a major part in folks' lives and everyone would regularly attend church and, presumably, be baptised as an infant.

 I am looking for any help, observations or comments on the subject from you learned people please??

thank you
Tony

[stanmapstone]

In the "Book of Common Prayer" there is a specific section for "The Ministration of Baptism to such as are of Riper Years, and able to Answer for Themselves", so it was not uncommon.
See http://www.eskimo.com/~lhowell/bcp1662/baptism/riper.html
Stan

[stanmapstone]

As he died shortly afterwards he was also making sure that he would be buried in consecrated gound. 
Before 1880 no body could be buried in consecrated ground except with the service of the Church, which the incumbent of the parish or a person authorized by him was bound to perform; but the canons and prayer-book refused the use of the office for excommunicated persons,  for some grievous and notorious crime, and no person able to testify of his repentance, unbaptised persons, and persons against whom a verdict of felo de se had been found. 


Stan

[behindthefrogs]

The first Baptist Church in England was founded in 1612.  Anyone who belonged to the Baptist Denomination would not have been baptised as a child.  Even in the times when attendance at the local Anglican Church was almost compulsory, marriage was the main ceremony which took place in the Anglican Church as it established settlement.  Non-conformists would in those days attend the Anglican Church in the morning and their own meeting at some other time of the day.

David

[Berlin-Bob]

Hi Tony,

You can find another topicson Adult Baptism in the
RootsChat Reference Library => Lexicon ^{(click here)}

(Tip: click on the category "Baptisms"- on the right - for related topics)


Bob

[stanmapstone]

It could have been a Hypothetical baptism (Ch. of Eng.), baptism administered to persons in respect to whom it is doubtful whether they have or have not been baptized before.

Stan

[wildtech]

Many of my family were baptists, my 7g grandfather was recognised as a dissenting worshiper and registered his house for meetings in 1708.  As baptists they practiced adult baptism which was not registered and would not appear in parish records.  This has made it hard to track some of them down.  Some non conformist chapels did keep their own records of births and deaths although it was purely voluntary.  Before 1837 I believe it was illegal to marry in anything other than a C of E church. 

oleoneplace It sounds as if your grandfather's baptism was recorded in the parish records which would probably exclude him being a baptist.

[Aulus]

I've been working my way through some non-conformist registers from Darwen in Lancashire.  In the late 1700s/early 1800s it seems to have been fairly common for whole families to be baptised at once, parents and children.

Interestingly, some I've found being baptised in more than one church/chapel, so presumably they went round the various chapels to see which they liked best (or whose sermons they disliked least!), and the vicars (or whatever the non-conformist equivalents are called) persuaded them that they needed to be baptised into his denomination, whether or not they'd already been baptised.

I think William Woodruff's Road to Nab End describes how in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, his family swapped denominations a number of times - even between CofE and RC.

[behindthefrogs]

Most churches recognise each other's baptisms which is one of the reasons for the CofE hypothetical baptism which is use when it is not certain whther a baptism has been properly carried out.

An exception seems to be the Roman Catholics who insist on doing it again.

Some baptist churches also do not recognise a child baptism at all and so will carry out an adult baptism.

This doesn't of course mean that some families won't be "done" more than once

Going back to the original subject.  My parents were Baptists at the time of my birth.  The result was that I was baptised as an adult but not in a Baptist Church.

David