Tech Forum

My wife wants to find a missing baptism date for her son so she can enter the info in familysearch. She has asked the ward clerk and membership clerk but niether where to find a baptism date (they have only the confirmation date).

Where can I suggest she look to, to find the baptism date for her inactive son?

I am a Stake Clerk assistant and I don't know.

I suggested to her that she call the ward where my step-son lives to request his records be transferred there, and then ask the clerk for the information.

Are any other options available to her?

She could ask her son for the info.

Greggo wrote:She could ask her son for the info.

He doesn't remember either. Any other ideas?

michaelfish wrote:He doesn't remember either. Any other ideas?

Ask the son if he remembers by chance what day of the week it occurred on - was it on a Sunday/Saturday? If he could recall the day of the week, then you can determine the actual date from looking at a calendar and referring to the confirmation date. Generally a confirmation will follow close to the actual baptism. All of this will only be a guess without the actual record which could be obtained from the ward that your son resides in.

If the son's records are not in the ward in which he resides, this would be a good opportunity for you to request the records into your ward, get the info, and then move them out to the appropriate ward with updated contact info.

michaelfish wrote:My wife wants to find a missing baptism date for her son so she can enter the info in familysearch.

I would suggest you do not enter your son into FamilySearch. FS/nFS is for the dead, not the living. Only enter living people needed to tie into your deceased ancestors.

The church is aware of your son and at the appropriate time will add him to the database. Adding records of the living only clutters things up.

michaelfish wrote:My wife wants to find a missing baptism date for her son so she can enter the info in familysearch.

If the information is showing up properly on his own membership record then the information is already in FamilySearch, but it is hidden from view due to current privacy laws. As soon as a death date is recorded for the individual on the membership record, that will feed in to FamilySearch and release the privacy lock on the rest of the information in FamilySearch on that individual.

I'll bet that even if your wife manually enters this information into FamilySearch, the software will automatically lock it down so that only she (the submitter) can see it, because the individual is still living.

For example, before my father died, I could only see his name in new.FamilySearch.org. My wife was unable to get any information on him at all. Her searches did not even show he existed.

After my father died, and that date of death was recorded in MLS, I was able to see all of his information in FamilySearch, including baptism date, endowment date, etc. My wife was now also able to locate him in FamilySearch under her own log-in.

My mother is still alive, and I can only see her name in FamlySearch. I cannot see her birth date, or marriage date. My father's record shows the marriage date, but does not show to whom he is married, because that information is still private because my mother is still living.

One possible reason for this, suppose the individual gets excommunicated or has his name removed from the records of the Church, but does not want to inform his parents. Due the the Church's desire to maintain the confidentiality of that adult individual, the parent's records will not show any change in the individual's status (e.g. confirmation date of a child suddenly disappearing off a parent's record). To do otherwise becomes a breach of that individual's confidentiality.

jbh001 wrote:I'll bet that even if your wife manually enters this information into FamilySearch, the software will automatically lock it down so that only she (the submitter) can see it, because the individual is still living.

This is true. And as you mentioned, when a death date is recorded, the information becomes available to all in FamilySearch.

jbh001 wrote:. . . the parent's records will not show any change in the individual's status (e.g. confirmation date of a child suddenly disappearing off a parent's record).

Actually, if the child is no longer a member (for any number of reasons), the confirmation date will disappear off a parent's IOS.

lajackson wrote:Actually, if the child is no longer a member (for any number of reasons), the confirmation date will disappear off a parent's IOS.

I thought there was a recent MLS message about that indicating that the child's confirmation dates were not going to disappear off the parent records in such scenarios.

jbh001 wrote:I thought there was a recent MLS message about that indicating that the child's confirmation dates were not going to disappear off the parent records in such scenarios.

If there was, I have not seen it. Perhaps it was very recent?

The child's confirmation date with which I was most familiar went missing just last month.