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Archiver > TMG > 2005-03 > 1109863468


From: Karen Willard <>
Subject: Re: [TMG] Baptisms and Christenings
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2005 07:26:55 -0800
In-Reply-To: <000801c52000$bd32f790$6800a8c0@PARAATHHQ1>


Users of these two tags need to understand that both of them belong to
the "birth" group. Since many of my 20th century people were immersed
as adults, and the event has absolutely no implications for their
birth, I created a custom tag to record their event -- it often marked
their formal induction into membership in a particular church -- that
is not part of the birth group.

Being in the birth group means that for certain types of narrative
reports, the information in these tags will be presented in certain
places (like in a 1st paragraph) not under the control of the date
field or the sort field.

I use the Christening or original Baptism tag when the record I'm
researching uses one or the other term and it was an experience
administered to babies. I have a few families that didn't live very
close to church (or there wasn't a suitably authorized church rep
always present) that ran three or more kids through all at once. In
these families the eldest kids clearly were not baptized as babies but
the intent of the sacrament was for babies and so I did NOT use the
custom adult baptism tag for recording what they experienced. I've been
lucky in having a birth tag for those kids, too, so the baptism tag is
not marked as the primary tag for the birth group for them.

--Karen Willard

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