Registrar Office marriages post 1850

[elricks]

in 1837 the marriage forms changed due to 1837 Civil registration.

In 1850 it became possible for couples to marry in the registry office.

There are many repositories that give access to the original record of marriages after 1850 that were celebrated in churches. 

Do you know if any of the marriages that were conducted in the registry office, and that would have used the same certificate, are available on line?  I know it is possible to purchase copies, but seeing as I am a subscriber to FindMyPast, and a dedicated user of Family Search, I want to explore other options first.

Also whilst thinking about this, is there any way to tell from any index of marriages if a post 1850 marriage was in the Office, or in a church?

[Rosie (MaccHistorian)]

The marriage registers found in record offices and online are those which were held by churches, which usually deposit their registers with the record office when full. The copies of these registers, and the marriage registers used by the register office, are kept by the register office for the purpose of producing copy certificates, so any marriages which took place at a register office or e.g. at a nonconformist church which did not have its own register will not be available at a records office or online.
 
If the marriage registers at a register office have been indexed e.g. by a local family history society then you should be able to find out at which church a marriage took place. The exception is if it was registered in the registrar's marriage book, in which case it could have been either a register office wedding or a marriage in e.g. a non.confirmist church  Most of these indexes can be found at ukbmd.org.uk.

[mckha489]

And this site is useful for identifying locations.
If it isn’t there, one assumes a registry office  (although I think there may be some exceptions it is still a very handy tool)

https://one-name.org/marriage-locator/

[jonwarrn]

In 1850 it became possible for couples to marry in the registry office.

Where does 1850 come from?
Marriages in register offices began in 1837, as a result of the Marriage Act of 1836
http://www.histpop.org/ohpr/servlet/View?path=Browse/Legislation%20%28by%20date%29&active=yes&mno=4043

[MollyC]

And this site is useful for identifying locations.
If it isn’t there, one assumes a registry office  (although I think there may be some exceptions it is still a very handy tool)

https://one-name.org/marriage-locator/

This site is far from complete.  It is very useful when it works but better in some areas than others.  It would benefit from everyone submitting non-con. and registry office marriages they know of, but there does not seem to be a simple way of doing this, apart from sending an email via the Guild of One Name Studies, which I did once.  It was gratefully received.

Also it is not clear how to volunteer to index registers which are in record offices.  It only requires noting the first and last marriage in each quarter in each church so it occurs to me that a lot could be done at home using online search sources.  It does not depend on absolutely accurate transcription, simply identifying the "marker" events for each quarter which are then matched with the page numbers in FreeBMD.

[garden genie]

There is also at least one case (Manchester) where the historic Register Office registers have been transferred to the Record Office. Unfortunately they remain subject to the same restrictions and cannot be inspected, you still have to apply for a copy certificate.

[MollyC]

This sounds like the Registry Office running out of storage space, but is there a legal restriction on their being out of the custody of the Registrar?  Record offices are accustomed to accepting records closed for various periods of time but very unusual to have records which will never be opened.

[rosie99]

Also whilst thinking about this, is there any way to tell from any index of marriages if a post 1850 marriage was in the Office, or in a church?

It has been suggested that you can get a rough idea from the GRO register numbers. For example if you select a year, quarter and registration district on freebmd and no names you can see the range of numbers.  Apparently churches are listed first so the very high numbers could be Registry office or registrar attended

[garden genie]

Molly, as far as I remember it was stated that the only difference would be that you sent your application to a different address for those years.