Gibson - Newtownards - Parish Register 1868

Cam12,

A Protestant baptism would never appear in a Catholic parish register. 

A family might convert and in that case you might find them being baptised into the Catholic faith.  

Looking at this 1868 baptism in the nli records. I note that the comments column at the end of the line has “Pater a cath.” That is, the father was Catholic. So it looks to have been a mixed marriage, and the child Robert was baptised Catholic. 

Tradition was to marry in the bride’s church and so the fact that they married in the Church of Ireland doesn’t mean the husband was himself COI at that time. (Nor in fact that the wife was COI either.)  Until the 1860s, the Church of Ireland was the state church and would marry anyone. So it was popular with mixed marriages, as sometimes neither the RC nor the Presbyterian church would allow a mixed marriage, unless the other party converted. So don't assume the couple were both COI just because they married there.

It looks as though William resumed/remained a Catholic if he had his son baptised Catholic in 1868. But then perhaps the family later switched to Presbyterianism?  What about the other children to that marriage? Were they baptised Catholic too?  I can see Richard 18.3.1865, William 31.8.1866 & Catherine 10.9.1872. There looks to have been at least 3 pre 1864 too.

Perhaps when William died, the family reverted to Presbyterianism? Here’s a death for William Gibson, farmer, in 1873. That puzzles me slightly as in some of the children’s births he was a butcher, not a farmer. Could there have been 2 separate Gibson/Murray families?  

https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/deaths_retu…

Cam12,

Regarding the nli records, you are correct that in order to use them effectively you need to know the parish (not necessarily the exact church) that the event took place in. They are all RC records incidentally so not relevant if looking for other denominations. 

Rootsireland and Ancestry both have most of those records on their sites and there is a search facility so easier to use than working through the nli collection. The quality of the transcriptions isn’t perfect and some rubbish comes up occasionally. But the thing to do is to look at the original and decide what it says.

There are a few RC parishes that don’t have records on-line at all. (For one reason or another the priest couldn’t make the originals available. He has the only copy).  Be aware that many rural parishes don’t have any records much before the 1820s.  You can see what records exist, parish by parish using this link:

https://www.johngrenham.com/places/rcmap_index.php

Click on the county, then on the parish and it will tell you what records exist and where they can be found. You’ll see the Ulster Historical Foundation mentioned. They have a tie in with rootsireland so their records are replicated on that site. Newtownards has no records before 1864. No easy way round that.

Irishgenealogy is very good for statutory birth, death & marriage records. (Births, deaths & RC marriages start 1864. Non RC marriages 1845). It doesn’t have any records for Northern Ireland after 31.12.1921. For those you need to use the GRONI site (pay to view). Also irishgenealogy doesn’t have the same range of RC church records. They do have a lot of records for Dublin and some parts of the south of Ireland that are not on the rootsireland site and they only have some Church of Ireland records, though that is increasing. So church records are patchy on that site.  For Northern Ireland a lot of the church records are still not on-line anywhere at all. Notably Presbyterian records, some Church of Ireland and all the lesser denominations eg Methodists, Baptists, Quakers etc. For those you often have to go to PRONI and look them up by hand.

Tradition was to marry in the bride’s church, so wherever Margaret was living at the time of her marriage is probably the key factor. Ballydavey is in the RC parish of Holywood. It has no records earlier than 1866 so if the couple married there in 1857 or 1858 there is no record to locate. The position with Belfast is slightly better. There are records for most churches but the oldest RC church in the city – St Mary’s which opened in 1784 – has no records before 1867. So if they married there, then again there’s no record to be found. I did search for the marriage on Ancestry for you but without success. So my money is on them either marrying in Holywood or St Mary’s Belfast. If the church where they married wasn’t keeping records or has lost them, there’s no easy way around that.  In some jurisdictions eg England there used to be system of sending a duplicate copy of births & marriages to the bishop (known as the Bishop’s copy). Sadly Ireland didn’t follow that system and so if the originals are lost or were never kept, that’s it.