Why does FamilySearch include non-public records on its database for those born quite recently?
I was very surprised to discover the record found via this link on Family Tree, added as a Research Help from a record in one of its databases. It is a baptism record for 1949, giving details of an individual quite likely to still be living. I could have quite easily directly added this individual as a child to these parents (already added to the tree themselves) without noticing the date. (I do not intentionally add living persons to my private space.)
Okay, I understand public records of births being placed on FamilySearch, but believe indexing / including "non official" records for such recent events to be possibly at conflict with FamilySearch's own privacy standards.
I have included the link to the record, rather than the Details page on which this hint appears:
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:CXXC-9TT2?lang=en
Answers
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@Paul W I recently found my own baptism on one of the for-pay genealogy websites; I'm definitely still living. I was quite happy to find it TBH. I knew I was baptized and the names of my godparents, but the church my family attended had not yet been built when I was born. I wasn't sure if my baptism would be in those registers or in those of a nearby church.
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Unlike you, I would be horrified to find my baptism details on a website! I believe religious beliefs are a very personal matter, so wouldn't want the world to see my religious affiliation (well, at least that of my parents) at my infant baptism - any more than I would wish to share my current views / beliefs in public.
The point of my original post was to express my disappointment that FamilySearch (or any website) should be indexing / publishing such recent records, whereby we can obtain similar information on very likely still-living persons who might wish to keep such personal, faith-related details to themselves.
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Sorry, Paul, I understood your point, and I don't generally disagree. Just commenting on this occasion, finding my record answered a question I had with no one still living to answer.
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Finally, to add: to the person who anonymously "disliked" my previous comment, I'm fine with that. But I would appreciate your sending me a private message, whereby we can have a civil discussion on the issue of the rights and wrongs of the religious affiliations of those, very likely to be still living, being revealed via FamilySearch indexed records.
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Interesting. The information for that collection states "Due to privacy laws, recent records may not be displayed." Is 1949 far enough back that in the view of current applicable laws this is public information? Or, since this is quite an old collection (the Research Wiki page for it states "The collection was originally assembled for publication in April 2010.") have laws changed and no one has ever caught that this set contains now private records? It all goes back to those contracts we never see.
There are collections that give even more recent information. One for California Births which contains the child's full name, birth date, and mother's last name has births as late as 1995. But by California law, those are fully public records.
Whether having the name of the church where a christening took place actually gives any information about the religious viewpoints of a family can actually be debatable. I personally knew a couple years back who went around to several churches in town until they found someone willing to marry them even though neither of the couple ever attended any church for years. Seeing a church on their marriage record would not tell you anything about their actual beliefs.
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Paul, unfortunately I think many folks don't understand what the dislike button means. On numerous correct and polite replies I have posted, I've had multiple dislikes.
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I find it works best if you simply assume they meant to press Like.
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Like @Paul W I am perturbed by the appearance of a 1949 baptism in the open historical indexes. In fact, as an (ex-)IT professional I would go as far as to say that I am appalled by its appearance. The basic custom and practice in England & Wales is not to release details of records until 100y has passed since the birth (or implied birth) of the person(s) mentioned. (Obviously there are variants if there is no birth data present). That's why our censuses are not released until 100y have passed.
@Gordon Collett mentions that the England, Births and Christenings, 1538-1975 collection is old and wonders if, perhaps, things have changed. Yes and no. IIRC, years ago, that EB&C collection became the repository of the IGI extracts relating to England's births and christenings. That stuff is old. But, so far as I remember, it has been updated since. In particular, images (and there is no image on the record in question) have been added. I have no idea if new indexes have been added but the citation for the index record in question includes the date 4 February 2023 suggesting strongly that this is a new index.
The parish registers for St. Matthew, Birkenhead (as per the index record in question) are held by Cheshire Archives at Chester (up to 1969 for baptisms, after which they are presumably still at the church) and their practice was always to close public access to any volumes containing data about potentially living people. For instance, they supplied me with details about my grandpa's employment in the 1950s, but the lines in the photocopy above and below him were covered up.
If I try to have a look at the indexes in question, it rather looks like baptism indexes for St. Matthew, Birkenhead are available up to 1954, which looks like the end of the 1945-1954 register - Chester have 2 more baptism registers after that so some confidentiality filtering has been done somewhere, either by FS or by Chester. Strict application of the 100y rule would see the last baptism register from this church being the 1901-1918 register - unless FS can now show part registers (which it couldn't do before), in which case it could allow access to details up to 1924 (say).
Custom and practice has always been to consider records such as baptisms to be subject to 100y closure - it's not like birth indexes where some sort of access is mandated and the index contains no details of other parties as well as only brief details about the principal.
@SerraNola - this is the reverse of the usual complaints about lost records. My view is that these records should not be released on the FS site - can you, or whoever, raise this issue somewhere for adjudication? Thanks
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It gets worse - there are baptisms in the 1970s (well, yes, the title implies data up to 1975, of course!)
I thought I'd found one from 1980 but judging by other details this was a date-standardisation issue and should have been 1880 🙂
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