Does it really say Creature?
 

Creature

I'm looking at Somerset early records on ancestry trying to fill in blanks and see if I can find a marriage for my Robert Widlake and Katherine his wife.

I've found a Robert Wedlake to Catherine Sellirk and was looking for the Sellirk name to see if it had been transcribed correctly and to see if Catherine was baptised and had siblings etc.

I've found a burial for a Creature Selark in Mar 1599 (right hand page). No idea if she is anything to do with me but surely that is not a real name. Could someone have a look and tell me what you think? I can see how they get Creature but my mind is rejecting that as a name.

I think it looks like Beatrize.

Thank you. I like that far better

It may well say Creature:

https://www.rootschat.com/forum/inde...topic=761421.0

I think I have seen Creature before and that's what it looks like.

It's not Beatrize.

Creature isn't always used for babies as the Rootschat article suggests. The first one I looked at today was the burial of a widow. I don't know if the vicar used the word Creature because he didn't know the lady's Christan name?

I wonder if it means not received into the church? This would cover privately baptised infants but also adults who were not baptised.

OC

Creature has a slightly wider meaning of owned by/entirely controlled by, as in X was Y's creature - ie acting entirely on Y's instructions. So you might use it as wife/servant as well child, though in this case the Rootschat definition looks like the correct one.

I am not a Harry Potter fan, but I couldn't help thinking of the character Creature when looking at this thread. Having googled, I've just discovered his name is Kreacher not Creature, which has ruined it for me!

The other term you sometimes see is crisom or chrysome for a baby that has died within a month of baptism. The crisom was the cloth that was put over the baby at baptism.