The following observations pertain to the Register of Baptisms at the Hebron Lutheran Church and may not apply in other churches. The "rules" which I am going to describe are not written down anywhere. Instead, I took known families and studied the relationship between the sponsors and the parents. That there were some relationships seems obvious from the duplication of the surnames of the father and the sponsors.
Using known families, I found that the sponsors were usually of the same generation and most likely were either siblings of the parents, spouses of the siblings, first cousins, or spouses of the first cousins. In baptisms involving the Fisher family, where a Fisher was either the parent or a sponsor, I found that more than 95 percent of the sponsors fit one of the categories above. It is extremely rare to see the parents of the parents as sponsors, or to see older children of the parents acting as the sponsors for the younger children, though examples of both of the cases are known. Still very rare, but slightly more common, are aunts and uncles of the parents. Second cousins or first cousins, once removed, are also unusual.
One of the more common deviations from the cases above is the use of nieces and nephews and most likely this occurs when the ages are about the same. Because child bearing went on for twenty-five years in some cases, the older children were already having children before the parents of the older children stopped having children. Thus, many people were older than their aunts and uncles. As a result, some people were closer in friendship to the next generation than they were to members of the same generation.
Friendship seems never to qualify an individual to serve as a sponsor. Rather, sponsors were taken from relatives, either by blood or by marriage, who were of a similar age.
After working out these "rules" using known cases, I have applied them to analyze cases where there is an uncertainty. Some of the successes include identifying the maiden name of a woman. When several people appear as sponsors who are not related to the husband, and when these individuals are from one family, it is reasonable to place the mother in this family.
One can confirm the brothers and sisters of a given individual. An example occurred where there were two John Blankenbakers and the question arises as to whether John #1 has been confused with John #2. By looking at the sponsors for the children of John #1, one can form an opinion as to his family.
In one case, I was able to conclude that a man, Henry Wayman, had two wives. Later, I found supporting evidence for this view from a Wayman biography.
The rules are so strong that when there appears to be a deviation, one is tempted to search for an explanation. In some cases there are reasonable answers. A good example in this category is in the July 1997 issue of Beyond Germanna (volume 9, number 4).
Many of the exceptions to the rules involve people who have no relatives in the community, or who are the oldest child in the family and have no brothers or sisters who are old enough to serve. In these cases, non-relatives had to be used.
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.