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England (Counties as in 1851-1901) => England => London and Middlesex => Topic started by: cloviscat on Wednesday 21 March 12 10:24 GMT (UK)
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Please forgive me if this is not the right section. I believe Southwark is teshnically Surrey, but as my Q is about London marriage records I thought this might be the place to ask?
And I guess this is a really obvious query, but as I don't usually do London records, I'm a wee bit lost.
I'm doing a basic family tree as a birthday gift for a dear friend (cash-free birthday presents this year!) and I've found the London marriage records - with their high level of detail - so useful. But what does it mean when a marriage is missing? FreeBMD tells me that 1st Quarter of 1878 Alfred Watts maried at St Saviour, Southwark (Vol 1d page 200) but I can't find it in the register transcriptions. Am I missing something obvious? And how might this happen?
Any insights gratefully received!
Cloviscat
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I'm assuming that you mean that the marriage details are missing from Ancestry - London Marriages!! Not all parish registers appear in this collection, and by 1878 there were many non-conformist marriages, again not covered by this collection.
The FreeBMD reference is for the Registration District of St Saviour, and would cover many churches and civil marriage venues within that area.
Sorry :'(
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It means that you are looking at an incomplete set of records!
From FreeBMD you will have learned that he married either Anna Maria Burgess or Marion Parker. To learn more you will need to order a copy of the certificate.
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Nope - that's helpful from both of you - thanks :-)
This is a rush-job, I'm afraid, so I've not had chance to really learn about the wider context (yet!)
And I can't order a cert without - gasp - spending money! It's up to my friend if she wants to take it further on the basis of what I'm sketching out...
I'm checking out whether Anna Maria Burgess is the Anna Maria who shows up as his wife in the censuses later on...
I'd be surprised if it was non-com, but there's plenty of surprises out there ...
Cloviscat
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As I understand it, the registers for St Saviour that you can see online are for church marriages only - the couple may have married in a civil ceremony and therefore won't show up in the church register.
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Hi
The GRO indexes are compiled from the quarterly returns submitted to the local register office and then to the GRO.
They are compiled in the order of Anglican church, alphabetically, the majority of which are available online, then Quaker, Jewish, and Registrar attended and/or Register office which are not available online.
The page range for this quarter is 1-210, your entry is at the top end of the range, 200, so I would suggest that there is very little chance of obtaining a copy online.
You might have to purchase the marriage certificate or birth certificate of one of their children to confirm the maiden surname.
Dawn
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Thank you for this. I'm quite resigned that I won't get further for this record online - I'm quite pleased iwth this little project overall, so I'm counting my blessings :-)
dawnsh - does that mean there is a higher likelihood that this was not an Anglican marriage? How interesting... Alfred's children had Anglican marriages in the Southwark area, so they may have settled on CofE, but I note that Anna Maria Burgess's mother is from Ireland, so I wonder if that was a factor? What about RC marriages?
As my friend is a convert from Anglian to RC, she may find interest in this...
Cloviscat
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FUMOP -
Anglican - a religious choice
not
Anglian - a 70s TV region!
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I would definitely interpret the entry as not being an Anglican marriage, only the certificate will tell you where it took place.
The Anglican parish entries stop at 185. You can do a search on freebmd where you only enter the district and quarter/year , then have a look at the surnames where the page number is higher than 185. I think some may fall into the 'of Irish origin' category and potentially Catholic in faith.
Don't forget though that the registrar would also have been attending the other non-conformist mariages as welll, so don't exclude the possibily of Methodist, Baptist etc.
Dawn
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That is extremely insightful. I have learnt a lot this morning and I'm very grateful.
I shan't jump to any conclusions though! There's a surprising amount of interpretation availble from the tiny bit of information I have, but: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence :-)
And if ever I find out, I will post back...
Cloviscat