Genealogy Chat

Thanks Merry, in fact I've no idea whether she's needed a passport, I don't really know very much about her, although my grandad got around quite a lot so if the itchy feet ran in the family I doubt she'd have been content to stay at home all the time. I'm working on the assumption that she was born in the same place as her siblings, but without the register entry I've no confirmation of this. Michael

Michael, get your great aunt to ask at the local reg office, if she knows where she was born. Has she never needed a passport? The general error rate at the GRO indexing stage is a between 1 and 2% covering every conceivable type of error (and many not the fault of the GRO). That's one hell of a lot of mistakes when you add it up, but when you consider the task involved each Q it's amazing they got nearly 99% correct! Merry

well merry i am impressed. you defo had your scholars head on to get round that lot. well done. it does explain a lot. especially to someone like me who married in a registry office. thanks again love linda x

Good grief! that was hard reading Merry! but very interesting... No wonder I cant find my flippin Matilda's maiden name! (married three times)!!! I dont think she liked paper work, same as me! She didn't reg; any kids either....bloody woman!!

Not sure if my student loan would stretch that far... and anyway I haven't finished 'Calculus and Analytic Geometry ' yet. My great-aunt was born in 1937; she's still alive and thus able to confirm that this is definitely correct and she's not a figment of some other rellie's imagination - yet she does not appear in the GRO indexes. Either her parents didn't bother to register her - which seems unlikely, both due to the fact that her six siblings were all registered, and the potential penalties for failing to do so - or her entry got lost on its way from the local registry office to the index. Wonder how many others went the same way...

Buy your own copies, cheeky!!! LOL (anyway, I can't let mine out of my sight, because I keep refering back to them!! Actually they are really interesting reading) Merry

Merry, you can chuck 'em my way if you like - I'm doing a maths degree.

Ooh dear! The vicar would have two copies of the marriage register book. When the books were complete (obviously both books should be completed together as all marriages were entered into each book)he would send one copy of it to the local registrars (this is the one that hadn't been filled when you needed a copy) the second book would normally go to the County Record Office. Some register books issued in 1837 are still not filled, so these marriage certs are still not available locally! HOWEVER, the GRO should have the copies made my the vicar at the end of each marriage quarter.......But some vicars (esp in rural parishes where they often hardly had a marriage celebrated) forgot to bother with their quarterly returns......!! These are some of the ones that are either missing at the GRO, mis-indexed at the GRO or correctly indexed, but done late and with the suffix ''a'' after the page number. Merry

Hi Merry, Funny you should say about Vicars not sending the registers in for years. My first marriage sad to say only lasted 4 years, when I went to my solicitor to get a divorce I didn't have a copy of my marriage certificate so he sent to the county registra's office for a copy. That's right they didn't have a copy and my solicitor was told it would probably still be with the vicar so he wrote to him for a copy. This was back in 1988, so if it took him 4 1/2 years. Who knows if I hadn't needed a copy for my divorce the book might still have been with the vicar today!!

Oh Merry, This is really quite worrying - it's a wonder any of us have found the right ancestors .... or have we?! Thank you so much for sharing this. Regs Jane

If you have received a marriage cert from a local reg office and it happenes to be a photcopy of the ''original'' cert, but doesn't have the bride and grooms sigs on it, that will be because many vicars only got the happy couple to sign one copy of the reg and it happens NOT to be the one at the sup reg's office!! (hopefully the sigs will be on the other copy at the County Record Office) Bride and groom were supposed to sign the vicar's copy AND the local registrar's copy.......(I can remember doing this in 1983!) Merry

You're right, a miracle we can find anything!! The first post was gleaned by reading ''The Marriage Records of England and Wales 1837-1899'' by Michael Whitfield Foster. He has written two books on the subject, both sub-titled ''A Comedy of Errors'' !! Michael is a New Zealander - he managed to persuade the GRO to let him work in a corner of their offices at Southport for a few months where he did statistical analysis of the records and worked out all sorts of error rates, as well as detailing a lot of procedures etc. The books are great, though, not being a mathematician myself, some parts are a bit hard going to actually READ and TAKE IN!! Merry

You have been busy, Merry, but thanks for the info. Now we can all understand why things could so easily go wrong and why some of us can't find our rellies,. More to the point what a miracle it is that we can find any at all amongst the millions that have passed thro those hands. Kat

Hi Merry, You have be busy. Where did you find all that? Ann

What Could GO Wrong (some) Vicars not remembering to submit their copies of entries until months or sometimes years after the events.....registrars not noticing....... Bad handwriting................ Entries filled out before the couple arrived at the church....then they cancelled, but the entry still remained in the register and got copied and indexed! Copy sheets not forwarded by the sup.reg. at the right time. Vicar's not realising when the Q end had been reached Vicar's not sending in their records for several YEARS and then submitting them for the wrong time period - then the GRO were equally likely to mis-index them as well (a lot of these are the entries with an ''a'' after the page number) Clerks at the GRO mis sorting bundles or sheets, mis-recording page numbers....misreading writing........indexing the wrong people on the cert (witnesses in the GRO index instead of the bride and groom!!) Mis-copying info onto the card index. Mis-sorting the cards Bad copying of the card data into the GRO ledgers. Many of the Victorian ledgers have now been typed. This was probably done in the early 20th C - no one knows for sure (the old pages were not kept!). If you look at the old handwritten pages that still exist, sometimes the same surname written again and again is really hard to read, isn't it??? (so mis-typed) ...... Typist might turn two pages at once Typist might misread Vol and Page numbers ....mis-read district names......... and a million one one other things......!! Merry x

When civil registration began, churches where marriages could be conducted by their own minister, were issued with two marriage register books. Registrars were issued with one marriage register book which was for use both at civil ceremonies and for church and chapel marriages where the registrar needed to be present (that's most dissenting churches). For a C of E wedding, the vicar was to fill in the two copies of the marriage cert, AFTER the couple had taken their vows, one entry in each register book. The couple would then sign or mark (X) both copies of the register. Both registers were to be filled in in unison, so both books would be completed together. For register office and dissenting church weddings the registrar would have the happy couple sign his single copy register book. At the end of the quarter the ordained church minister (for C of E and other churches that didn't require the attendance of the registrar), completed the GRO copies of the marriage entries for the quarter just ended. These GRO copies were hand-written on pre-printed loose sheets, with four marriages to a side of paper up to 1852 and two marriages to a side after that date. Once the minister had written up his sheets, detailing all the marriages for the Q, he would forward them to the local superintendent registrar, who would also have made copies of all the marriages he had conducted, on similar loose sheets. The sup. registrar would wait until he had collected the sheets from all the ministers in his district (churches had a special form to fill in if they had conducted no weddings). He would then tie them into a bundle along with his own copy entries, and send them off to the GRO. So, the clerks at the GRO would receive a bundle of sheets from every sup. registrar in England and Wales. Within each bundle would be sheets in all different handwritings from all the different ministers and registrars for that area. The GRO would take all the bundles from all the sup. registrars offices and pile them into their different Volume Numbers. They would also sort the bundles for each volume number into a particular sequence (same each Q). So, Volume 1a would begin with the paperwork from the sup. registrar for Paddington District, every Q. Each sheet of paper for each volume number would then be numbered. So, taking Vol 1a ....the first sheet from Paddington would be page number ''1'' on the front and ''2'' on the reverse (so, either four or two marriages to a page number, depending on the date), continuing through the districts until the last marriage in Hampstead, which was the last district in Vol 1a. Vol 1b would also begin with page one, and so on. So, eventually, the GRO clerks would have a pile of paper for each volume number, each beginning with page one and ending with page ....whatever. Smaller volumes might have under 1,000 pages, but larger volumes might have as many as 1500 pages. So, for after 1852, when there were two marriages to a page number (and so four names - two brides and two grooms), that would be about 4,000 names for a small volume and 6,000 names for a larger volume. Maybe as many as 200,000 marriages altogether (numbers varied quite a lot) so getting on for half a million names per Q, all written within the body of all these loose sheets of paper, and not a computer or even a typewriter in sight!!! The clerks would then copy out all the bride and groom names, along with the district name, vol and page number for each person, onto little ''card index'' cards. These cards would be sorted into alphabetical order for each volume and then sorted into one complete alphabetical run for the whole of Eng/Wales for that Q. Then all they had to do (LOL) was write up the card details onto the ledger pages that we see on Ancestry and 1837 and in the ledgers at the Family Records Centre in London. The ledger pages would then be bound into a book for that Q. All these original ledger pages were handwritten. Now, back at the churches.........eventually the vicar would complete his two identical marriage register books. One he would keep (or would now likely be stored at the local County Record Office). The other he would send to the local sup. registrar. It is from this second marriage register book that the details will be taken if you order a cert from a local reg office. Hope this helps someone........... Merry x (episode 2 - ''What could go wrong!'' coming to a cinema near you shortly!)

This info relates to registration during the Victorian period........I cannot say if, or when, any regulations changed after that date. Everything I have written here relates to marriages, but the way the registrars dealt with births and deaths, after the registration had been made, would follow a similar pattern to a marriage in the registery office. Everything I have written is what was SUPPOSED to happen.....the number of ways mistakes could occur was virtually endless!!!!!........See below in a (big) mo...............Happy Hunting - Merry x