Help please to read

[momat]

Can some one help decipher this lot please.
Going back on some unfinished searches I have come up with this that I cannot read.
Looking for the SKED / ERSKIN birth please.

Cheers,

[AndrewP]

Hi Maureen,

My best estimate is:

• Feb: 23
  . . . . . . . . . to James Sked and
  Margt Erskin. witnesses Jannet Ramsay
  James Rooll.

Looking at the others on the page, details of the child born (or more likely baptised) should have gone where the long blank is at the start of the first line under the date.

All the best,

AndrewP

[momat]

Hi Andrew,
Thanks for that reply.
This is in May of the same year but I still cannot see a child's name here either.

Cheers,

[AndrewP]

Hi Maureen,

I read this one as:

• May 22d
  
  James Sked & Margt Erskin had
  a child, baptized called . . . . witnesses
  James Rooll, Jannet Ramsay.

Likewise, I agree, no child's name given. Not even a gender.

See also the edit I made to my earlier reply above.

All the best,

AndrewP

[momat]

Hi Andrew,

Very weird that the child has no name when baptized .
According to the IGI it was a male child.
He appears to be the only male for these two .
Can't look for a death if I have no name !!
Oh well this is what genealogy does to you

Cheers,

[joette]

I reckon the Clerk intended to fill in the blank later but forgot or the parents couldn't agree on a name.

[ninatoo]

Or maybe the child looked unlikely to survive, and in fact maybe didn't survive, so the name was left blank?

[Montrose Budie]

Very often the minister or session clerk only made rough notes initially, intending to transfer the info to the register at a later date, but if his note was defective in any way, and the time gap stretched to a couple of months; the maybe the clerk couldn't the minister's handwriting on the rough note, and the minister wasn't there any more.

Or, there was a right good party following the baptism, and when the session clerk went to make the entry the 'morning after', neither he nor the minister could recall the wain's name.


The all time classic entry, from Mauchline parish in the Co of Ayr is,-

Something, George Something lawful son to What-ye-call-him in Mains of Barskimming
was baptized April 9th 1704 -------

mb

[momat]

Believe it or not ,there is an actual listing for a Something on 1851 Census
SOMETHING JOHN M 25 COLMONELL /AYR

[brabason]

What surprises me is that it is in English even if the writing is hard to read and the entries are incomplete for various reasons. I have some very old OPR baptism entries that I cannot read, they may be in Gaelic?