In researching a collateral line, I have come across a christening record which indicates a child is
The children are 1) Romula Ruvalcaba KG36-LK7, and 2) Romulo Rubalcaba GQ1K-YZ9. I can find no other records such as marriage or death to determine male or female. What to do? Do I just complete ordinances for both names?
Answers
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You really have two issues here: 1) is the child a male or female and 2) did the child live to be at least 8 years old. I personally wouldn't do any work for the child just yet until I know for sure if the child lived to be eight or not. You fortunately have a child with a less common first name so scanning the death records for 8 to 10 years wouldn't be too hard. Of course they could move but there isn't much you can do about that.
Name: These two records are so crystal clear that even with my poor Spanish ability I had no trouble reading them. I am jealous as most records are not this clear. If I had to pick in this case I would go with the parish record. You would think that the priest would remember if the child was a boy or a girl. The civil registration could have been a transcription error. They could have taken the information orally or copied it off something the church provided and then transcribed it incorrectly. For that reason I would vote that the child is really a girl. But I could be wrong.
FamilySearch at least has the civil registration records of both deaths and marriages for the time period you should check. The deaths at least have a nice index at the beginning of each volumn.
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Thank you, Robert, for your input. It occurred to me that I might have to do a search through death records (beginning there), but I was hoping to avoid that. It's my feeling that the child died before 8. And yes, the records are very legible and easily understood. I am so grateful for the beautiful records kept by the Catholic church over centuries, and then after about the 1850s, the civil registration records recorded in Mexico.
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@Rita Sambrano Swenson Yep, sometimes you just have to pay the price and plow through the records if you are going to do it right. I like the records in Germany/Switzerland where the priest would often mark birth entries with the death of the individual especially if they died young. But never in Germany/Switzerland to you see such neat records as the two you are working with. I did do a quick look at the transcribed records for this time period in that state in Mexico but didn't see anything that seemed to fit so reading the records is the only real option. Good luck.
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A couple of weeks ago I found an interesting example of what you referred to. In the margin next to the entry recording a birth, the priest (or someone) many laters year made a brief note of the marriage of that person. I had never seen that before. Yesterday I began reading the "defunciones" for Encarnacion de Diaz, beginning in the year the child was born. It will take a while, but prayer is also my resource : ). Of the four children attached to the parents of Romulo or Romula, two of them died before 8.
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