Baptisms

Info

Melplash, Christ Church

The Christ Church register records the baptisms of 761 people between 1846 and 1904.

Different clergymen recorded different levels of detail with the period from 1864-1880, when the Rev. Lewis Tomlinson was officiating, being particularly informative about the residence of the families. Usually this was simply recorded as Melplash unless they were from outside the area but Tomlinson frequently named the hamlet, farm or house. He uses the unusual name "Redhove" for the part of Melplash around the church and pub which is sometimes called "Melplash Green" in other records.

Tomlinson's period seems to have coincided with the change in spelling from the old "Melplaish" to the modern "Melplash". The last time he recorded someone's residence as "Melplaish" was on 23 Aug 1868. The first time he wrote "Melplash" was 12 Sep 1869 and he never reverted to the old spelling.

Netherbury, St Mary

The registers of Baptisms for Netherbury, St Mary span 205 years (1695-1900) recording the admission of 6799 people into the Church of England. We are enormously indebted to Maureen Stollery who has transcribed the registers allowing us to view and search them here.

The details recorded vary over the years. Initially it's just the date of the baptism, name of the child, whether the child is a son or daughter and the name of the father. Until 1743 the name of the mother was usually only recorded when there is no record of the father. The date of birth (in addition to the date of the baptism) was recorded from 1761 to 1797. In 1813 the father's occupation was added to the register and the residence was recorded for all baptisms. Up until then it appears that the residence was only recorded for people who were not from Netherbury. From 1877 some of the dates of birth were recorded once more, in the Notes.

You can see an analysis of these records here.

Salway Ash, Holy Trinity

The register of Baptisms at Holy Trinity, Salway Ash transcribed here only spans 34 years (1838-1872) recording the baptisms of 772 people.

The register for 1873-2011 is available to view on Microfilm at the Dorset History Centre.

Records with missing or indecipherable dates are listed last.

Private baptisms were often performed when it was feared a baby might not survive long enough to be baptised in church. As well as the clergy they were often carried out by midwives and, in fact, could be performed by anyone who had been baptised themselves. They're labelled as "private", "privately" or the code "Pr" in the Notes column.

If a privately baptised infant survived they could be "received" into the church with a fuller ceremony at a later date which may also be recorded in the Notes, sometimes just with the code "R".

Children born "out of wedlock" were indicated with the terms - base, born, borne and baseborn or just the letter B in the Notes.

Date	Surname	Forenames	Son/ Daughter	Father	Mother	Residence	Father's Occupation	DoB	Notes	Church