Intentional Variation in of birth date between Church Baptism vs. Civil Birth Certs
Hello All,
Comments
I have seen it several times, and I have two possible explanations.
A very close relative of mine used to help his father who was in charge of their town's civil registry, and this person told me that at times, they knowingly recorded the wrong dates on purpose because the informants requested it that way for whatever reason. Not all civil registries worked like this, though, and some were very strict when recording dates.
Another possibility could be something similar to the story my mother and grandmother told me. My mom was born on August 28, and was baptized soon after that. My grandparents procrastinated a lot and did not go to the civil registry until months after the event. They found out that in that specific registry, if people recorded a birth more than 30 days late, they were charged a fine. I'm not sure how expensive it was, but in order to avoid that fine, my mom was registered as being born on September 28. Throughout her life, her official birth date was on September, but we always celebrated her on August 28.
Just like the other member commenting, in case of discrepancies, I usually go with the birth recorded on the baptism record, because most people tended to be more honest with the church.
I recently came across the civil birth certificate for a great uncle. It says he was born 19 May 1892. But his brother was born, according to his baptismal record, 10 May 1892. Sometimes this is such a headache. ;-p
Yes, some times, the civil registrations where until after the Revolution not that accurate (and to that we add that other
times neither the baptisms were), I've seen more cases around that time which coincides with the Revolution days, this is because many of the original records were lost, later in time people came back the civil register and gave the wrong dates, some times they were simply misunderstood, there were also hand-made copies done to rescue some documents in bad shape that ultimately led to many errors in the transcriptions. All in all I wouldn't dare to say that those mistakes are "common" but they do happened often in that period. On my on family I have been founding that many "facts" that we have taken for granted were rather incorrect, dates, ages, and names, even on my parents days that were the 40's.
If I would choose between the two documents I would go with the baptism, simply because peoples faith made that event more significant than going to the city hall for registrations (in those days), some times they would not go right away or they would send a family member other than the parents, or an acquaintance/employee to give the information, and rarely retrieve it, making them unknown of the possible errors.
Intentional Variation in of