The Roman Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart, Hindsford in the County of -- Lancashire --

Sacred Heart Baptism Register

Source
The baptism registers of Sacred Heart Roman Catholic church at Hindsford, Atherton for the years 1865-1903 are freely available on microfilm at Wigan History Shop. The data presented here were extracted from that film.

Latinised names
As in the example shown, the printed register is in Latin and christian names are Latinised. Surnames and places are not Latinised.

	Example from the Baptism Register

The information given here is exactly as it appears in the register. The christian names have not been translated into English, and come complete with Latin case endings.

The printed Roman Catholic Marriage Register in Latin reads as follows, with * for handwritten dates and names: Anno * die * mensis * natus [f-nata] et anno * die * baptizatus [f.-baptizata] est * filius [f-fila] * (olim * )conjugum. a me *. Patrinus fuit *. Matrina fuit *.

The English translation from the Catholic Family Historian’s Handbook is as follows: In the year * on the * day of the month of * was born and in the year * on the * day of the month of * was baptised [name of child] the son/daughter of [parent’s names] (formerly [mother’s maiden name]) a married couple. by me [name of priest]. The godfather was [name of godfather]. The godmother was [name of godmother].

Latin is an inflected language, which means that the endings of the Latinised christian names change according to how they relate to the grammar of the sentence. Translation of christian names from Latin to English is obvious in most cases, but be aware that one Latinised christian name may represent a range of English variations of the same name. For instance, the English names Jane, Joan, Jean, Joannah are all represented by Joanna, and Ann, Anne, Annie and Hannah by Anna. Likewise the Latinised Jacobus is both James and Jacob, and Fransiscus could be Francis or Frank. Unlike the Sacred Heart marriage register, which is consistent in its Latinisation, the baptism register is variable. Names are often not Latinised, and some have incorrect case endings. The following are among the more difficult first names.

Brigetta = Bridget, but the Latinised form appears in many variations staring with either Birg or Brig.
Carolus = Charles
Franciscus = Frank or Francis, and Francisca = Frances. Easy to mix these two up.
Gulielmus = William
Helena = mostly is Ellen rather than Helen or Eleanor.
Jacobus = James
Joannes = John, and Joanna = Jane etc. These two can look very similar and when dealing with the Latinised original, it is important to note where the name occurs and whether it is followed by fila (daughter) or filus (son).
Eugenius = Eugene, and more likely Owen.

Notes
As can be seen in the example, the surname appears written in a space at the left, and also within the printed part of the register: in some cases the spellings are different. I have recorded such variations in the notes. From about 1908 it was the practice to add marriage information to the baptism register. As can be seen in the example, the note was entered in Latin, in tiny handwriting, in the surname space. Rather than transcribe the Latin exactly, I have paraphrased the essential details in English and placed them in the notes.

A Word of Caution
While extracting the data from the register I have made continual checks against other sources such as censuses and BMD indexes to help confirm the often poorly written entries in the register. I have come to the conclusion that Richard O’Neill, the priest at Sacred Heart, was hard of hearing. There are many examples of possible errors, some where a name is simply wrong, and others where what is written looks “misheard”. As an example, the Sacred Heart register clearly records the marriage of Thomas Rafferty and Catharine Dunville in 1878 (confirmed in the civil register), but her maiden name appears as Dunphy or Dumphy in the later baptism register. Be aware and think laterally when trying to match names in this register with other records.

Peter Wood
April 2007