Transcriptions with birth date after baptism!

Michael-Cooley

Here's an example: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6D9K-Q854

I've come across with a lot of these and have no idea how to handle them. I suspect the "birth" is actually the baptism, especially considering that the birth itself was generally not recorded in the early English records. Can I just switch the dates. (I certainly can't dig for the originals for all that I need.)

Paul W

@Michael-Cooley

Unfortunately, getting to the original - or perhaps finding this record on another website - is going to be your only way of confirming what the dates truly do represent in this record, and in the other examples you are encountering.

In all possibility, the birth date does represent that of the baptism, but the 1653 date might just be an error created in the indexing process and that might be 1658, too. I find it more usual to find a user (without evidence) inputs a baptism / christening date that is prior to the birth date on a Family Tree Details page. In these cases, I either delete the birth data altogether, or replace it with an "about" date carrying the same year of the (confirmed) baptism event.

Unless the records you are encountering all relate to the same FamilySearch collection, there could be different reasons this problem is arising. In the example for which you provide the link, you cannot edit the record (no connecting image) even if you discover the facts about what the dates actually do represent. For now, I would probably ignore the 1653 date and leave the 1658 one as the birth detail. With no direct evidence (other than common practice) that it does represent a baptism, I don't think you should designate it as such.

One final thought - after thinking more about the date - is that, having been in the "Commonwealth" period, the 28 Feb 1658 could well relate to a birth - see the article at https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Birth-Baptism_Intervals_for_Family_Historians (Second sentence - "Although birth dates were entered during a brief period during the Commonwealth…")

Áine Ní Donnghaile

For what it's worth, the extract on FindMyPast, the source of the index on FS, shows 1658 for both the birth and baptism events.

First name(s)	David
Last name	Hill
Birth year	1658
Birth date	28 Feb 1658
Baptism year	1653-75
Father's first name(s)	Edward
Father's last name	Hill
Mother's first name(s)	Dorothy
Denomination	Anglican
Place	Wiveliscombe
County	Somerset
Country	England
Archive	Somerset Archives
Archive reference	D/P/WIV 2/1/3
Document type	Parish records
Event type	Baptisms, marriages & burials
Register year range	1653-1675
Record set	Somerset Baptisms
Category	Birth, Marriage, Death & Parish Records
Subcategory	Parish Baptisms
Collections from	England, Great Britain

RTorchia

No, this is a known bug which I raised like months ago where some records were setting the record or event date to the starting date of the catalog/database. On that example: "Source Publication Year Range 1653-1675"

https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/158577/newly-attached-marriage-sources-are-now-setting-their-source-dates-incorrectly

Áine Ní Donnghaile

@Michael-Cooley

I have access to the register because I am at my Affiliate Library this morning. It's a mixed-use register, and the events are not necessarily recorded in precise date order. I have scrolled through a number of pages but I don't yet see the baptism for David Hill.
The register begins in 1853, as RTorchia mentioned, and as you can see from the extract from FMP that I posted above. The first legible record is from April 1653.
I'll keep looking.

Michael - please check your private messages. Look for a red number on the envelope at top right of this page.

Adrian Bruce1

I'd agree with @Paul W 's suggestion at the end of his post. I'm looking at the Wiveliscombe register on Ancestry and, as I suspected, it's been way too many years since I looked at that style of handwriting for me to be able to read it coming in cold. But, so far as I can see, it does look like it's recording births and not baptisms. I don't know enough about parish registers in the Commonwealth / Interregnum area to know how typical this was. (Fun fact - in that era, the "parish register" was the citizen charged with compiling the dates, rather than the book they used for that purpose!)

The 1653-75 date range is actually the date range of the register, so my suspicion would be that 28 February 1658 is indeed the date of birth and FMP inserted 1653-1675 as the date (range) of the baptism because something had to be put there. That range has then got truncated on entry to FS.

Michael-Cooley

Thanks everyone! This is a huge help.

So, as I now understand, the birth was actually entered rather than the baptism and the opening range of the register was entered at the baptism! Silly programmers. :)