Day: February 12, 2016

Baptism of Walter Basquil 29 June 1846
Aughagower; County of Mayo; Archdiocese of Tuam. Baptisms, May 1846 to June 1846, page 56

This is kind of like my holy grail. I’m a little stunned that I finally located it. Walter was my great-great grandfather. He was born well before the start of compulsory civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths, so I really didn’t think I’d find any documentation that would pin down his birth date. True, this is just an entry in the baptismal register, but it means that my previous best guess for his birth (1845) was slightly off. He would have been baptized soon after birth, so this puts his birth date firmly in 1846.

The funny thing is that, as I was going through the register for 1845, the year I thought he was born, I encountered pages with such faded writing that at first I thought they were blank. No amount of adjusting contrast or even inverting the values could have made them legible. When I got to the end of 1845 without finding Walter I almost cried, for real, because I thought for sure his entry was lost in those pages.

So frustrating! But now I’m floating on a happy little cloud.

Baptism of Michael Baskwell 15 February 1844
Aughagower; County of Mayo; Archdiocese of Tuam. Baptisms, Jan. 1844 to Feb. 1844, page [27]

Two things are going on here. First, there’s the baptism of Michael Baskwell (Basquill), son of Michael Basquill and Margaret Kelly, on 15 February 1844. This is my great-great grandfather Walter’s older brother, and I believe the first child in the family to be baptized in Aughagower Parish, so I am on the right track. The sponsors are Thomas Flinn (I think?) and Julia Baskwell. I don’t know which Julia this is, yet, but both sponsors would be close to the family.

Second, check out Mrs. Duffy on the last line. One advantage of slogging through thousands of pages of un-indexed images is that you get to see stuff that wouldn’t normally interest most folks. I doubt, when Ancestry releases its own set of indexed parish records for Ireland, that entries for churching will make the cut. I think that’s unfortunate, though.

Churching is a blessing given to women after they’ve given birth. The child does not have to be live born or even baptized, but hopefully if you look further back in the register, you’ll find a baptismal entry for the woman in question. If there isn’t one, that would indicate that the child likely was stillborn or died before it could be baptized. Either way, it’s potentially helpful information.