If I'm understanding the situation correctly, you've gathered some records (census, marriage certificate) and attempted to correlate them. The identifiers you've used to determine a match are the names of the people involved (Joseph and his purported father Charles). You'd like to find a baptism but you haven't been able to find one so far.
The question is this:
Is the "same name, same place, so it must be the same person?" rule of thumb sufficient to say you now have proof?
I would say no for several reasons. In his class on Inferential Genealogy at FamilySearch (see handout), Dr. Thomas W. Jones Ph.D., CG, CGL, FASG, FUGA, FNGS warns us against "Kinship Acceptance", that is, simply accepting the kinship which is stated on the record. Primary documents can have mistakes on them; sometimes people lie, etc. Dr. Jones gives examples of primary source records with mistakes in his article "Perils of Source Snobbery". Instead of simply accepting what is on the record, we should try to establish through research what the relationship is, which is called "Kinship Determination".
We can do this by doing sound genealogical research, using the five elements of the Genealogical Proof Standard. The BCG's website says:
To reach a sound conclusion, we need to meet all five components of
the GPS.
- Reasonably exhaustive research.
- Complete and accurate source citations.
- Thorough analysis and correlation.
- Resolution of conflicting evidence.
- Soundly written conclusion based on the strongest evidence.
The Missing Baptism
There may be many reasons why you can't find a baptism. Records may not be complete for the area. One thing you could do as a cross-check is to chart the population for Cold Ashton from the census years and look at the number of baptisms in the register to see if they seem consistent. If you find a big disparity, it may be that children were baptized elsewhere. Non-Conformity is one reason you might not find children in the local CoE registers. Another is record loss, or that the local clergy weren't doing their jobs. Have you searched for Cold Ashton in newspapers? I found a case in Devon where the local curate was disciplined by the bishop for not doing baptisms. Record loss is another possibility.
Other pitfalls:
- Your search may not have been wide enough in time. I have seen cases where multiple siblings born years apart were baptized at the same time. You say you've checked for the sibling's baptisms, but did you cherry-pick the entries from a search, or did you read the register? Look at the surrounding pages to make sure your missing person isn't nearby.
- Check locations where relatives lived. In his book Family History Nuts and Bolts: Problem Solving through Family Reconstruction Techniques, Andrew Todd says that families who lived in nearby parishes would "save up" baptisms and travel to a place where they could have the cousins baptized together so the whole family could celebrate.
Methodology
My standard rule of thumb is, when I don't have enough to make up my mind, I look for more record sets (see the 'reasonably exhaustive search' element of the GPS). When I'm correlating a 'new' record like the 1841 Census to a set of records I've already collected, I like to assume that the new one is about a different person with the same name, and look for evidence to prove that. What can you find out about the Charles Knight in the 1841 census? How many men named Charles Knight live in the area? What identifiers can you use (occupation, etc.) to disambiguate them? With the 1841 Census, we don't have a stated relationship to argue about, so we aren't even doing Kinship Acceptance, we're just assuming a relationship because it's convenient for us to do so. But anyone who has worked cases where the family has a common surname know how easy it is to find two cousins or more around the same age and with the same name living in the same location.
Don't assume that you won't be able to find more records. Use the FamilySearch Wiki and other guides and search for probate records, land records, school records, parish chest records. Look at genealogical publications to see who else has written about Cold Ashton; see if local Family History and local history societies have record sets the big sites haven't put online, or started a list of Cold Ashton 'strays' found in other locations. Look at the Guild of One-Name Studies and the Surname Society, One-Place Study researchers, etc. See what resources other researchers in the area have used and how they used them. Review every record you've found on the family, and look for clues you may have missed.
You don't want to just assume that you've found the right census household, do a couple decades more research based on that, and then discover a will that reveals that the Charles in the 1941 Census is actually James' uncle, and that for reasons, James gave Charles' name as his father on his marriage record.
Books like Andrew Todd's Nuts & Bolts (for the UK) and Marsha Hoffman Rising's The Family Tree Problem Solver (with examples from the US) show how using cluster research or FAN Club research can help us come to a more solid conclusion.
Resources:
