The Birth and Baptism Book-keeping Blunder

During my most recent rekindling of interest in my family history, I noticed that I didn't have an exact date of birth for my 2x great-grandfather, William Hearn, just a quarter date from the birth indexes of Q1 1840.

I like to get as much detail as possible about my direct ancestors, including copies of BMD certificates where possible, so I immediately thought this was unusual.

I then spotted I'd previously written in the notes:

Prev birth date noted as 3 March 1842. Birth index overrides that - unless there was another William?!

So, at some point, I had a date noted but then found an birth index with a contradicting date and took that as being the most likely. Perhaps that original date was from an unverified source, such as a shared tree on Ancestry.

So, why do I have three different official records giving different dates? It's time to dig a little deeper.

Assessing the evidence

Let's turn Jessica Fletcher and take a look at what I was working with.

The birth index

The birth index shows William as being registered in Q1 (January-March) 1840 in King's Lynn and this is the latest edit I'd made to his record in my tree.

The 1841 census

I know the 1841 census is pretty basic, but here he is - William Hearn, one year old, to parents John and Mary in June 1841.

The baptism record

Baptisms solemnized in the Parish of St Margarets, King's Lynn, in the County of Norfolk in the Year 1844

As you can see, though, this document is severely faded and the scan quality is poor.

My initial thought was that 1840 William died in infancy, being replaced by William II in between June 1841 and March 1842. It's certainly possible, and the whole naming a child after a deceased sibling definitely happens elsewhere in my family tree.

But that didn't seem to be the case here - I couldn't find any registered deaths of an infant by that name, in that place during those times. That didn't mean it didn't happen, but it was unlikely. 

I ran more searches for William, turning off the option in Ancestry to filter out records that I've already saved or it thinks wouldn't be relevant. This is when I found another baptism record. The original one I'd saved was the transcript of the parish registers - an official copy; this one was the original.

Transcripts always carry the risk of including mistakes as clerks copied out the rows of entries into new ledgers. But, again, that wasn't the issue here. Then I spotted something I couldn't really have seen before. William's sister, Sarah, was baptised on the same day, that I already knew, but my notes on her record read: "Birthdate on baptism record illegible." Well, not any more and that's where something jumped out to me.

The revelation

Popping up in my fresh Ancestry hints was another baptism record, this time it appears to be the original parish registers whereas I was previously working with a transcript (one of the official copies that were produced for various purposes).

Everything about this document was much, much clearer than the previous one.

Now I could easily and without distraction read the handwriting of both lines as:

Sarah Ann, daughter of John & Mary Hearn. [baptized] 1844 21 January. Born January 11 1840.

William, son of John & Mary Hearn. [baptized] 1844 21 January. Born March 3 1842.

That's when I had my "wait a minute...!" moment and I realised that the birth dates had been switched.

Everything else I had pointed to William being born in Q1 1840, and Sarah in Q1 1842, and here were the exact dates, just applied to the wrong siblings. I'm not sure why or how they got switched; perhaps whoever first recorded the details assumed the first child listed was the eldest.

I also don't know why I hadn't actually just ordered the official birth register records / birth certificate from the General Records Office before, as that would've given me the dates straight away. But with the uncertainty with the dates, maybe I was just not wanting to spend money on images that might not have been the right person.

Side note: how good is the GRO's digital image download option?! I know it's been around for a few years - I used it when it launched with images being just £1.50 each rather than the £3 it is today, but that's still better than forking out £8 for a PDF certificate, or £12.50 for a hard copy one.

Anyway, everything all started to make sense and things were fitting into place.

I headed over to the GRO site and ordered William and Sarah's birth records. Confirmed! Sarah Ann Hearn born 3 March 1842! William Hearn, born 18 January 1840.

Wait... the 18th? Not the 11th?

Nope, even here we've got a date issue with a one-week difference in birth dates. I'm obviously taking the GRO's records as being correct over the baptism register from 4 years later, but William just had to have that extra little curve ball, didn't he?

St Margaret's Church photo (used in post thumbnail) © John Salmon (cc-by-sa/2.0)