Aguascalientes Baptisms

Aguascalientes: Baptisms

Baptisms

For centuries, baptism has been a fundamental staple of religion. Normally in the Catholic Church, babies were baptized a few days after being born. In baptizing the infant, a register was created after the event. This register is called baptismal record and is important for genealogy. It is important not only because of all the information given for each individual but also for their ancestors.

The purpose of this article is for the reader to have a broad knowledge when utilizing baptismal record effectively in the search for their ancestors. There are four fundamental questions that will be answered:

• What is a baptismal record
• How do I use the information to move forward with my genealogy
• Where are baptismal records found
• How can I view them

Example

This section contains examples to see what a baptismal record is, transcription of the document to see what it says, and parts of the document with descriptions to understand the wealth of information.

One has to take into account that not all baptismal records are the same. As seen in the examples, some records contain a greater amount of information than others. There were various reasons why a record contained more information than another. It can be for these and other reasons:

• The socioeconomic status of the child’s family.

For example, generally if you were poor not much information was written down; on the contrary if they had a lot of influence more and better genealogical information would be given.

• At the priests disposition.

Sometimes the priest would give preference to a family of lower means then a richer family.

Priests moved and the style of one could be drastically different from another.