Posts in November 28, 2022

In some locations and time periods, naming children for the baptismal sponsor was common. Other times it was not. When my grandmother and two of her siblings were christened as infants in 1915 at a Protestant church of German heritage in Illinois, all were named for their baptismal sponsors. In looking at other entries for the same church during the same time period, the practice was relatively common. That was not the case when looking at the christening records of a German immigrant church in Nebraska (again, Protestant). My great-grandmother and several of her siblings were christened there in the 1880s–none of them had the same name as their sponsor (all were named for grandparents in this case). In looking at several pages of entries for the same […]