Presbyterians practise infant baptism, and the registers of these baptisms form one of the most useful categories of record when looking for Irish ancestors, especially in the period prior to the introduction of civil registration of births in 1864. The basic information provided in a baptismal register is the name of the child, the name of the father and the date of baptism. The mother’s name will usually be given as will a specific location. The occupation of the father and the date of birth of the child may also be provided.

Although there are a number of very early Presbyterian registers of baptism, including Drumbo (1692), Killyleagh (1693), Lisburn (1692), and Portaferry (1699), in the majority of cases, baptismal records do not pre-date the nineteenth century. This may be for the very simple reason that the congregation was not established until the 1800s. Less systematic record keeping was also a factor.

Many Presbyterian baptismal registers begin in 1819 or shortly thereafter for at the Synod of 1819 the following instructions were issued:

That every minister of and Baptism the Synod be enjoined to register, or cause to be registered, in a book to be kept for that purpose, the names of all children baptised by him; the dates of their birth and baptism; the names of their parents, and the places of residence. This book shall be carefully preserved, and considered as the property of the congregation – to remain with them on the death, resignation, or removal of the Minister, and to be handed to his Successor, for the purpose of continuing the registry.

Even with the ruling of 1819 some Presbyterian congregations do not have complete sets of nineteenth-century registers of baptisms. Some records were accidentally destroyed as the following extract from the baptismal register of West Church, Ballymena records:

I preached at Churchtown on the 5th of November 1848 according to appointment by Presbytery and the list of children baptised on that day having been accidentally destroyed in my absence, I am necessitated to leave blank in the register at the same time noting its cause.

Due to the ‘negligence and disobedience of a female servant’ the records of Bready Reformed Presbyterian Church were lost in a fire in the home of the clerk of session in September 1868. Other records were destroyed deliberately. One nineteenth-century Reformed Presbyterian minister became convinced that infant baptism was contrary to Scripture and left his congregation, but not before he had destroyed many of the baptismal registers. The baptismal records of Rosemary Street Presbyterian Church, 1868-1941, were destroyed as a result of the ‘Belfast Blitz’ during the 2nd World War.

On other occasions record-keeping was simply lax. A visitation of 1st Donagheady Presbyterian Church in County Tyrone in 1865 found that there was no baptismal register, no communicants’ roll, and no session or committee minute books. In 1876 it was noted that no minutes of any committee meeting had been kept since 1871. It was not until 1878 that a baptismal register was provided. Frequently registers disappeared around the time that a minister died or moved to a new congregation.

For the most part baptismal registers will follow a fairly routine format. Occasionally, however, an entry of some interest might appear. One such entry appears in the baptismal register of Crossgar Presbyterian Church in County Londonderry. Following a record of the baptism on4 May 1888of David Campbell at the age of 46 the entry continues:

This D. Campbell spent 21 years and 43 days in the Army (4 years in England, 1 in Scotland, 3 in Ireland, 12 years and 27 days in India) before his baptism. While in the Army be was an Episcopalian, having gone over from the Presbyterian Church like a great many others; when he got off he attended the Episcopal Church in Macosquin for some time, but he wrote on a letter asking me to baptise him which I did on sincere profession of his faith.

One of the main grievances of Presbyterians for much of the eighteenth century centred on the right of their ministers to conduct marriages. At last in 1782 marriages performed by a Presbyterian minister were legally recognised by the Irish parliament. It was not until the passing of another act of parliament in 1844 that Presbyterians ministers were permitted to marry a Presbyterian and a member of the Church of Ireland.

Prior to the standardisation of marriage registers from1 April 1845, these will give in their simplest form the date of the marriage and the names of the bride and groom. The residence and the name of the father of each party are occasionally provided. The names of the witnesses may also be given. At the same Synod of 1819 that exhorted ministers to keep registers of baptisms, similar directions were given for the keeping of marriage registers:

Overtured and unanimously agreed to – That every Minister of this Synod shall keep, or cause to be kept, a regular registry of all marriages celebrated by him; stating the date of each marriage, the names of the parties, the Congregations or Parishes in which they reside, and the names of at least two of the witnesses present at the celebration of the ceremony.

It was also agreed that every minister would be required to submit annually to his respective presbytery an accurate list of the marriages he had conducted in the previous year. These marriages would then be copied by the clerk of presbytery into a separate volume. Relatively few of these presbytery marriage books seem to have survived, or at least are in the public domain. One that does relates to the Tyrone Presbytery and covers marriages in the following congregations:

Cookstown (possibly 1st), 1820-8, Loughgall, 1819-22, Tobermore, 1819-22, Vinecash, 1825-8, Carland, 1826-8, Magherafelt, 1819-28, Dungannon (possibly 1st), 1819-28, Benburb, 1827-8, Cloveneden, 1826-8, Richhill, 1826-8, Stewartstown (possibly 1st), 1820-7, Coagh, 1820-2 and Minterburn, 1819-22 (PRONI, MIC/1P/460).

From 1 April 1845, with the introduction of civil registration of non-Catholic marriages, the information on the individuals getting married includes their name, age, status, and occupation. The names and occupations of their fathers are also given. The church, the officiating minister and the witnesses to the ceremony are named. In most cases the exact age of the parties is not given, and the entry will simply read ‘full age’ (i.e. over 21) or ‘minor’ (i.e. under 21). If the father of one of the parties was no longer living, this may be indicated in the marriage certificate by the word ‘deceased’ or by leaving the space blank, but in many cases it is not.

Few Presbyterian congregations have very old burial registers. Part of the reason for this, as will be discussed presently, is the fact that not every Presbyterian meeting house has an adjoining graveyard. Those burial registers that do exist were mainly started in the late nineteenth or even the early twentieth century. Burial registers can be fairly uninformative, with the name of the deceased, the date of burial and occasionally the occupation and age at death given.

One very interesting early eighteenth-century document relating to the burial of Presbyterians survives among the records of Rosemary Street Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church in Belfast. It is a register of the hiring of funeral gear – palls, cloaks and hats – for about 2,000 funerals which took place in Belfast between 1712 and 1736. It has been published as Funeral register of Rosemary Street Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church (known as the First Presbyterian Church of Belfast), 1712-36, edited by Jean Agnew (Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation, 1995).