Beginning in 1907, the Roman Catholic Church worldwide required that a Catholic person’s marriage be reported to his or her place of baptism. The 1907 decree Ne Temere required that marriages be noted on one’s baptismal record. They are usually noted on the side of the baptism record. Compliance with this decree varied, especially in the early years. When the proper procedure was followed after 1907, you can look at a Catholic’s baptismal record to find out where he or she got married later on. An effect of this decree was that many Catholic marriage registers (at least in the United States) began to record the date and place of baptism of the bride and groom. Presumably, that was so that the priest or his assistant could make the proper report of the marriage to the place of baptism. In this way, a 20th century Catholic marriage record can lead back to the person’s baptismal record.

Reporting requirements were soon expanded further. In 1918 the Code of Canon Law additionally required that a person’s confirmation, ordination (as a priest), and religious profession (as a sister or brother) be noted in the baptismal register. Thus, after 1918, if you look at a twentieth-century Catholic’s baptismal record, you can quickly learn a great deal about that person’s life history and residences. Of course, this depends upon the priests having followed the rules and reported the events properly, which in many cases they did not. These reporting requirements did not apply only to people baptized after 1907. They applied to all events occurring after 1907. If the event of marriage, for example, occurred in New York City in 1912 but the baptism had occurred in Macroom, County Cork, in 1875, that marriage should be noted in the baptismal record in the Macroom registers. Finding an immigrant’s Catholic marriage record can thus be an important step in identifying his or her place of birth – because the exact Catholic parish of baptism could be recorded in a 20th century marriage record.