Family research (General)

by Mike Pinchin , Bedford, England, Monday, September 11, 2017, 19:57 (2623 days ago) @ kimmy-lou

I don’t know what resources you have available to you but I use Ancestry for this kind of thing because of the availability of images of Gloucestershire Parish Registers and Bishop’s Transcripts. However, Ancestry has the profoundly annoying habit of hiding things which ought to be obvious. This is the case with Jonas RAWLINGS. The usual kind of search for baptisms refuses to show him up. Under these circumstances the only thing to do is guess at his baptism date (in this case the Australian Death Index is the only evidence and implies c1807) and baptism place (probably Cold Ashton). Then search the Parish Records with no name entered, Cold Ashton Gloucestershire as the place,1807 as the year and select the Gloucestershire records 1538 to 1813. Pick a baptism close to the date and simply step through the entries backwards and forwards until you either find the person or not. Doing this for Jonas reveals the following,

Jonas the son of Daniel and Ann Rawlings was baptised February 9 1805.

In fairness to Ancestry the volume is in poor condition around the margins and the name RAWLINGS is only just readable. Perhaps their transcriber gave up too easily.