At 6:40 pm +0100 15/10/07, tricia hayes wrote:
I wonder if anyone could advise me as to why I can't find a
marriage
registered?
I accept the fact that they could have just lived as man and wife
and brought up a family, but I would have thought it would have been
seen as wrong in the 19th century - especially as the father of one
was clerk of the church!
<snipped>
Is there something I'm missing, or was my family just
anti-marriage?
Tricia Hayes
Why you can't find a marriage registered.
There are several possible reasons or even combinations of reasons.
1. The marriage never took place in the first place.
2. It's possible that the couple got married well away from their
native or birth parishes. Quite a number of North Wales couples
during the last half of the 19th century got married in haste at St
Nicholas in Liverpool, usually because of an impending birth. The
ministers at St Nicholas were quite 'flexible' with their
requirements. Another possibility is Chester.
(My great-grandfather, a wheelwright (born and living in Penegoes,
near Machynlleth) married my great-grandmother (born in Llanbedr or
Llanfair DC, near Ruthin) in 1854 in a completely unexpected
parish---Chirk, near Wrexham. I would never have found the marriage
without the aid of the Hayes Marriage Index, which covers North Wales
and the borders.)
3. In a church marriage the clergyman responsible overlooked or
somehow omitted to include the marriage in his returns to the
superintendent registrar. The record system relied heavily on the
performance of the clergy, on accurate and legible copying and on
complete returns to the superintendent registrar. There is evidence
that these expectations were not met by all clergy in the form of
unexpected gaps in the returns or missing entry numbers in the
returns.
4. The handwriting of some clergyman was such that errors were made
in deciphering the names at some stage in the registration process.
5. Assuming that the marriage names were correctly registered at the
local registration office, errors or omissions could have been made
when indexing at the local registration office.
6. Similarly at the GRO name decipherment errors or omissions were
made when compiling the national (GRO) indexes.
7. Again at the GRO errors and omissions were made by the typists who
transcribed the original handwritten indexes into typewritten form
(see at the bottom for missed surname changes that I've come across
when transcribing for FreeBMD).
8. Errors could have been made during the typesetting of the later
printed indexes.
I'm sure others can add to the list above.
------------------------------------------------
Before the publication of his book in 1998 Michael Whitfield Foster
wrote this about microfiche records and the GRO indexes.
----Quote---------------------------------------
As part of the research for my forthcoming book "A Comedy of Errors,
The marriage records of England and Wales 1837-1899" I carried out a
few checks on the completeness of the fiche of marriages and some
deaths in the 1860s and thereabouts. In NOT ONE year that I checked
did I record a fully complete fiche. The average loss in the
production of the fiche was about 400 names per year in all the years
that I looked at, in the form of odd frames or groups of frames
missed when the fiche were produced.
If you used fiche/film, try looking again to see, specifically,
whether you can see any evidence of a gap in the names at that point.
Another fault in the actual GRO indexes, also discussed in my book,
is the fact that when the indexes were typed, odd names and even
groups of names (I've found a group of 80) were missed by the typist.
Such omissions can be very hard to spot indeed. As the original
manuscript indexes no longer exist, according to the GRO, there is no
way that these gaps can be repaired other than by completely
re-indexing the system.
Certainly in the marriages, though I have no evidence for births and
deaths, there were also omissions because the indexers simply turned
over two pages of the data instead of one. Vicars missed a good
number of marriages in their quarterly returns, but again I haven't
covered the other indexes so I can't really comment, save to say that
even registrars were sometimes guilty as well. If registrars missed
some marriages, mightn't they have missed some births and deaths. If
you get my book when it comes out (shortly) you will rapidly see that
faults in the GRO indexes are virtually unlimited.
----Unquote------------------------------------
In his illuminating book Michael Foster reveals the infinite variety
of ways in which the records have suffered from errors and omissions.
On page 113 he gives the result of a comparison of the local Taunton
(Devon) marriage index and the GRO marriage index for 1844. Of the
persons in the Taunton index 5.7% were missing from the GRO index. If
this sample is typical of the omission rate it would mean that over a
million names are missing from the GRO marriage indexes of the 1800s.
Of the 406 marriages in the Taunton index, 12 marriages (or 3%) do
not appear in the GRO index.
There are 22 other individual names in the Taunton index that are not
found in the GRO index (i.e missing spouses). This raises the
omissions to nearly 5.7%.
There are 60 names that vary between the two indexes.
Here are some examples of indexing errors made by the indexing clerks
when the handwriting of clergymen could not be deciphered. A case of
SAFFIN being indexed under both JAFFIN and TAFFIN (in an effort to
cover the possibilities); CAPE indexed as CAFE; LOUD as LOVELL; BALL
as PRATT; HEMBROW as HEMHOW; Patricia as Patience; HOSKINS as HOPKINS
etc.
------------------------------------------------
Missed surname changes by transcribing typists
------------------------------------------------
As mentioned above here are three cases I came across when
transcribing for FreeBMD recently.
A GRO typist transcribing from the handwritten indexes (where the
surname was written for every entry) seems to have overlooked a
surname change from SYMMONS to SYMONDS for the 'Albert Stephen'
entry. (In the typed indexes surnames only appear at the head of the
list or at the head of a column.)
...
SYMMONS Albert Edward
Francis
Harriet Elizabeth
Martha
Albert Stephen
Alice
Ambrose
Anne
Arthur
Charles David
Ellen
Emily
----- New column ----
SYMONDS Ernest
Henry George
James
Maria Louisa Isabella
Mary Ann
Richard
Robert John
Thomas
William
William Lockyear
...
------------------------------------------------
What is one to make of the following typed entries? A missed surname
change for Charles or a misplaced Sarah Ann?
...
THEOBALDS Ann
Sarah Ann
Charles
George Maurice
Margaret Jane
...
------------------------------------------------
Below it is very likely that Emely's surname (and those below her)
was SMALES as this surname appears between SMALE and SMALL in other
quarterly indexes.
...
SMALE Albert Henry
Albert John
Alice Maud
Bessie Ann
Ellen,Newton A
Ely James
Emma
Frederick
Lucy
Nicholas John Lambshood
Richard
William
Emely
Emily
Emma
Hannah Mary
John Albert
Joseph
Squire
Thomas
William John
SMALL Ada
Ada Jane
...
--
Regards
Dick Jones Leigh-on-Sea Essex UK
rcjones(a)rmplc.co.uk