Author Topic: Jane/Jean Pirie in Marnoch  (Read 1998 times)

Offline Fordyce

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Re: Jane/Jean Pirie in Marnoch
« Reply #9 on: Monday 10 July 17 09:40 BST (UK) »
Bosconermal, it happens. I've come across clerical errors on several occasions. A recent example was "James, son of..." which could only be resolved by believing this should have read "Jane, daughter of...". (There was no evidence of any James in this family, and every evidence of a Jane of the same age - and other more roundabout evidence suggested the same.)

By checking the OPR as a whole over a couple of pages, I noted that every entry was written, even at different dates, in the same style, indicating the clerk was copying previously written notes - in other words he was making a neat fair copy in the OPR itself. I resolved the son/dau discrepancy by seeing that the clerk had written the gender against every entry in the OPR, and I concluded (you may think wrongly...) that he merely presumed the child's sex from its given name. It was then easier to accept that the clerk had also misread 'Jane' as 'James'.

And if you compare two registers in Rathven - one Church of Scotland the other Episcopal - details of the same baptisms can appear in both, but often with wildly different information. Dates, even the year, not matching. Now that's confusing!

Offline anne_p

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Re: Jane/Jean Pirie in Marnoch
« Reply #10 on: Tuesday 11 July 17 09:18 BST (UK) »
I too have Banffshire ancestry and it is apparent that some parishes were not very good at record keeping.
I suspect that although the parish received all the OPR  baptismal info from all over the parish, years worth of outstanding entries were hastily collated just before statutory recording of 1855.

In one parish, the clerk  even attempted to group family baptisms together but, he made a few errors when copying the info .
Like Fordyce says, entries covering up to 25yrs were all added at once with no attempt to put them into chronological order.

One page shows 2 siblings apparently born 6month apart and baptised on the same day ?

Luckily, I hold the family bible page where all the births were carefully recorded.
Most OPR entries are correct but, the elder of these 2 siblings was 4yrs older than her sibling and her true age is reflected in  her subsequent marriage, all census data and her death record.

Her birth and baptism is recorded  in Inverkeithny OPR as 1854 but she was born in 1851.