baptized earlier (3 percent within two weeks of birth; 11 percent from fifteen
to thirty-one days). In all, for 85 percent of infants the rite was administered
within six months of birth.10 The same may be said forWilliamWillie s parish-
ioners in Albemarle Parish between 1740 and 1775. Eighty-eight percent of the
thousands of baptisms he performed occurred within six months of birth
(2 percent within fourteen days; 6 percent between fifteen and thirty-one days;
60 percent between one and three months, and 20 percent between four and
six months).11
Tradition places baptisms in the home rather than the parish church; some
anecdotal evidence records this practice while offering support for Fithian s
observation that families made a social occasion, a   Diversion,  of the sacra-
ment. Parson Anderson baptized William Byrd s infant son at Westover on
Wednesday noon, 28 September 1709;   when this was over we played at cards
again till dinner.  12 On yet another occasion Byrd noted that at the   chris-
tening  of an Anderson child,   we met abundance of company. There was a
plentiful dinner but I ate nothing but bacon and fowl. Nothing happened par-
ticularly but there was dancing and [evident] mirth. Mr. Anderson was beyond
measure pleased with the blessing God had sent him.  13   Mr. Anderson  was
none other than the parson himself, and the christening took place not on a
Sunday, but on a Thursday. A notation in the parish register of Christ Church
Parish (Middlesex) provides another piece of evidence:   George Gray the sone
of Mr. Samuell Gray and Mrs. Anne Gray his wife was born 23th of April
being St. George s Day and was baptized the 5th of May at his owne house,
Mr. William Churchhill and Capt. William Daniell being God Fathers, and
Mrs. Ann Grimes God Mother.  14
From such accounts historians have concluded that baptism in eighteenth-
century Virginia was essentially a family affair and a social occasion. Rhys Isaac
suggests that as a consequence the definition of sacred space had become con-
fused in Virginia:   Sacred significance attached to these rites, being no longer
confined with the church, was transferred to the home and was there associated
with the gathering of neighbors to share in the event. Christian forms were
not set aside. The ceremonies of the Church were carried out as far as possible.
. . . The transference of rites of passage fromchurchtohome meant, however,
that specifically Christian ceremonies had come to be closely surrounded, and
even overshadowed, by social rituals and forms of celebration that persons in
the Anglo-Virginian tradition would have defined . . . as secular.  15
Similarly, in their diary and journal entries as well as in official parish regis-
ters, Virginians repeatedly spoke of having their infants   christened.    About
.
Rites of Passage 213