Hi there,
Re the elusive marriage for John William SHERDEN (born 1866)
https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/XTCB-9XJ Alfred DAVENPORT married Constance Alice PIPER and Constance’s mum was Sarah SHERDEN Most likely this would be NSW BDM ref 3770, please if ordering that mc, please please save your pennies and get an official transcription instead. It is likely the NSW BDM record is full of blanks….. See
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,546609.0.html But I am looking for that marriage, and pulling thinking cap down harder and harder ….. Assuming it was NSW marriage. I am very aware though that NOT ALL marriages that were registered by the clergy at their nearest court houses (or Sherrif’s office, or where-ever the deputy registrars were operating from at the time) were then recorded by the NSW BDM. I explain ….. Until about 1912, (and only from the establishment of the NSW BDM which dates ONLY from 1856), the registration of marriages conducted by clergy (ie most marriages) was a contentious issue for the Churches who were concerned that persons who were NOT clergy were to be authorised to access sacred church records. And so a long standing dispute raged across decades and decades in NSW Parliament. In rural areas, the deputy registrars were basically part time positions, often ancilliary to clerks at local court houses. The position required quarterly returns to be submitted to Sydney (by the postal service ….. which of course was fraught with issues in itself anyways)….. There was NO regulation to follow up if a district office did NOT submit a quarterly return, so if one got itself lost in the mail (or was not ever prepared, or arrived at Sydney HQ and was not legible) it could well be that the marriage was not registered at HQ. To the best of my understanding, there has not ever been a cross check to establish IF all rural marriages originally registered in local court houses ARE ALL included in the NSW BDM index. I know with certainity that there are marriages that were listed in those local court houses, BUT which are definitely NOT on the index displayed online at NSW BDM. You see, in the 1980s, as NSW BDM was changing over to EDP records, they recalled ALL the local court house ledgers. So back in the pre-internet days when family history searching was not done from an armchair, I had found various marriages registered in rural NSW court house ledgers. I can assure you that some of those marriages simply are not listed on either the CDs/fische or the online indexes. Several years ago together with an archivist at a leading Anglican church within the Sydney basin, we found that there were some 800 marriages that had been celebrated in the pre WWI era and NONE were on that online index. It is only this year (2013) that they have been uploaded to the online index (so they are not yet on Ancestry’s online index either).
Re COOKSON
Would that be the 1924 death of John SHERDEN, registered at Balmain South? The online index has William J for Father’s Given Name(s) and Cookson for Mother’s ….. Index has Cookson CAPITALISED, so it is her nee SURNAME
Some more Questions please ….. (earlier questions I asked are still waiting on answers, please
From that dc (or transcript of it) what does the “J” represent?
And where/when was that John born (as per the dc) (NSW BDM 17016/1924)
Cheers, JM
