52. Virginia Religion, Miscellaneous Documents, reel 19, vi, Library of Virginia (microfilm). 53. See Deconinck-Brossard, Eighteenth-Century Sermons, 114. 54. VMHB 31 (1923): 45 46. chapter sixteen 1. Daniel C. Beaver, Parish Communities and Religious Conflict in the Vale of Gloucester, 1590 1690 (Cam- bridge, Mass., 1998), 16. 2. BCP, 2:749. The rubrics offered the assurance and consolation that infants which are baptized dyeing before they commit actuall sin, are undoubtedly saved. Ibid., 2:747. 3. Churchill G. Chamberlayne, ed., The Vestry Book and Register of Bristol Parish, Virginia, 1720 1789 (Richmond, Va., 1898), 275 396, includes the register. With few exceptions the entries are limited to a record of births and baptisms and have been arranged alphabetically. The pages or sheets for several letters of the alphabet (D, E, F) have been removed and lost, and the entries under C and G are incomplete. Consequently all tabulations understate the actual numbers involved. To ascer- tain the annual incidence of births and baptisms, the extant entries were regrouped by year of birth. Among the statutory duties of the minister and the parish clerk was registering the vital records of the community births, baptisms, marriages, deaths, and burials. No central agency existed to oversee that function. Registration involved a small fee of three pounds of tobacco, paid to the parish clerk, who thus had a stake in recording these events. The fee, on the other hand, might have deterred some persons from meeting their legal obligations. Moreover, whenever parishes were without ministers, a vital component of local authority and supervision was missing. Whatever the circumstances, relatively few registers have survived and these generally not in their original form. They have been transcribed and rearranged, in some instances several times over, to meet the con- cerns of persons less interested in record preservation than in tracing their ancestry. The extent of copying errors is unknown. Transcribers may also have chosen to include only selective categories of information. Despite the compromised nature of the evidence, analysis of the registers challenges much that has been accepted as truth about eighteenth-century Virginia baptismal practices. Statu- tory provisions for registration may be traced through Laws, 2:241; EJC, 1 July 1686, 1:79; Hening, 3:153; 4:42 45. Patrick Henry of St. Paul s Parish (Hanover) was one parson who failed to keep (or, at least, keep up) a register. In 1779 the vestry noted that registering Births, Christening & Buri- als has for many Years past been greatly neglected in this Parish by which means various disputes respecting the age of People may arise. C. G. Chamberlayne, ed., The Vestry Book of St. Paul s Parish, Hanover County, Virginia 1706 1786 (Richmond, 1940), 3 May 1779, 543. 4. Slave births are substantially underregistered, a total of thirty-three between1720 and1724 and seventy-five between 1730 and 1734. Of these, only a handful were recorded as having been baptized, four in the 1720s period and fourteen in the 1730s. 5. [National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Virginia], The Parish Register of Christ Church, Middlesex County, Va., from 1653 1812 (Richmond, Va., 1897). Among baptized infants were Mary, an Illegitimate Daughter of Mary Rhodes, Matthew, an Illegitimate Born of an Irish Woman, Henry, Son of Mary Month a free Indian, Mary, daughter of Wm Chancellor by Mary Cole, and Judith daughter of Peter Johnson and Anna both slaves to Morrice Smith. Ibid., 70, 72, 99, 103, 225. Systematic recording of slave births did not begin until 1722; 669 slave births were entered between 1722 and 1733 with only 12 recorded as being baptized. 6. W. Mac. Jones, ed., The Douglas Register: Being a Detailed Record of Births, Marriages, and Deaths Together with Other Interesting Notes, as Kept by the Rev. William Douglas from 1750 to 1797. An Index of Goochland Wills. Notes on the French Huguenot Refugees Who Lived in Manakin-Town (Richmond, Va., 1928). 7. Gertrude R. B. Richards, ed., Register of Albemarle Parish, Surry and Sussex Counties, 1739 1778 (Rich- mond, Va., 1958). John Thompson, minister of St. Mark s Parish (then in Orange County), reported in 1743 that his baptisms the previous year included 298 white children, 13 black children, and 1 mu- latto. Rev. John Thompson to Rev. Samuel Smith, 25 August1743, in John C. Van Horne, ed., Religious . notes to pages 210 12 421