Genealogy Chat

I have just looked at my parent's original marriage certificate ... Manchester 1937.
All the certificate, including where it says, "This marriage was solemnized between us." .. followed by their names; is written in ONE flowery hand!
"In the presence of us," is different handwriting, different pen but both 'signatures' look the same! In fact they look like the handwriting of The Rector, who has signed the certificate twice; once after "by me," and then at the very bottom of the page, across an original, red, one penny postage stamp. So, other than his, there are no signatures on this original certificate.
Carole

I have had quite a lot of certs in actual copy from from the relevent register office .
When i have had a handwritten one its always been correct.but its still nicer to see the actual signiture of your ancestors.

nudge

I wonder how many GR members have got original marriage certs and how old they are? It would be interesting to compare the size ,shape, colour

I have in front of me several marriage certificates issued at time of marriage.The older ones are signed over a penny stamp.Each certificate is totally in the same hand.
Each church certificate is perforated on the left side so they have been removed from a pad or book.
I am sorry JMW but one from 1904 is quite a bit smaller and is cream with black printing/lines.

All certificates are supposed to be copies of the original entry in the Register. Churches often get the couple marrying to sign the certificate as well as the Register. This presents a slight anomaly as the member of the clergy signs the certificate to say it is a copy of an entry in a Register in his/her custody when clearly not everything on the certificate is 'copied'. You will not find this happening in Register Offices.
Each quarter, members of the clergy copy out the recent entries in their Registers and send to their local Register Office. Without any additions, these copies are sent to GRO. This means that the clergy may have mis-transcribed something in a marriage entry, not the local register Office.
All marriage certificates are long and green, and have remained almost unchanged since 1837. Birth and Death entries have moved from 5 to a page to 2 to a page and since 2006 1 to a page, and since 1969 have moved to A4 size.

My marriage cert is also a long one. Like I said it has all our real signatures on it - hubbies is very distinctive, I can recognise my own old sig., and my Mum was a witness, I would know hers anywhere. It was given to us before we had left the church. I can remember signing at least two things. This was in 2001.
I can remember hubbie being given it in the church because he had no where to put it and so like a typical man he folded it up and put it in his breast pocket. You can see it on some of the photos poking out the top.

The scan i added is taken from a long (1885) marriage cert.

LIGHT HEARTED COMMENT

I received a marriage certificate from local reg office, but as it was not a copy of the original, it will not fit in an A4 sleeve.

Gutted

Meg

As has been mentioned before, each church has its own marriage register. The minister would file returns to the registrar at regular intervals. When the church register was full, the register would have been sent to the local register office. This is the first possibility for mistranscriptions to occur, when sending to the local register office. The local office would then send returns to the GRO, the second point for mistranscription. The GRO would then produce the BMD index, again possible mistranscribing details.
The only way to be certain of seeing original signatures on marriage certs is by looking at the parish registers that have been deposited at the register offices, copies of which are normally available at records offices on microfilm/fiche.

A very informative book entitled "A Comedy of Errors" or the Marriage records of England and Wales 1837-1899 by Michael Whitfield Foster explains all the errors/missing records etc.

I agree with Sylvia - for church weddings the only real signature is in the Church Register, not in the Local RO register, not in the GRO register and not on the copy given to the happy couple. Well that's certainly the case for us (although we only had one copy, not Sylvia's 10 LOL) our copy was pre-written by the vicar. We only signed one copy and that was in a book (his register).
At a couple of civil weddings I've been to over the last year or so, the same applies.
Can't say for Births or Deaths as I haven't had to register any yet.

RobG

I have a copy of my Father's Death Certificate. He died in 1973 and I sent for the copy from the GRO in 2006. It has my signature on as the informant.

My understanding is that every church had its own register, in which were entered all marriages and baptisms that took place. When a register was full, it was kept in the church safe box, usually under lock and key .................. or more recently sent to the local archives or cathedral.


The vicar sent information on marriages to the local Registry Office, which entered the information into THEIR record books.

Every few weeks or months, the information was copied out again and sent from the local office down to the GRO in London

Births and deaths were registered with the Registrar of the district or his deputy. Again the information was entered into the year book, and information copied out and sent down to GRO ar regular intervals.



BTW ...... we were married in 1967, and I have 10 ((ys TEN) copies of the certificate. We did NOT sign 10 times ....... the vicar had pre-prepared the copies the night before, up to a certain point. After we had signed the Church Register, he sat there and copied the names of the signatories over on to each copy. We stood around and chatted until he had finished, then he handed me all the copies.



sylvia

I have a variety of certificates some with the original signatures some without. My Nans death certificate issued when registered hasn't got the informants signature but the copy of my birth certificate, obtained from the GRO is a scan of the original entry. (I'd recognise my Dad's signature anywhere!)
I also have a parish register entry with my 3xggrandparents signatures on. I always marvel at that because there can't have been many young people in Suffolk from working class backgrounds who could write in 1832.

This is very interesting.I would have thought that a church would retain their marriage register and send returns to the registrar where they would be entered into their volumes.They in turn would send a duplicate volume to the GRO.
If that is the case original signatures are only in the church register.
Ps
Can you imagine how many churches there are in any district and how many marriages are performed at the same time.
It follows that they cannot use the same register.

Just adding more information. The local reg office sent all their bmds every 3 months to GRO .

Mistakes could be made when the information was copied and sent . So GRO bmds are a copy of a copy

Jim, yes our wedding was the same. We signed the register, but the cert was sent to us a week later, written out by the minister, I think.

My mum's wedding cert was issued in the same way.

Just had a look at certificates I have. I have some from Uk and Australia. The Australian ones are photocopies from the original certificates and have the signatures on them and are clearly by different people. The Uk ones are are handwritten copies by one person. Regards Heather

Rather than guess if the certificates contain original singatures or clever copies.
Has anyone clear memories of their own wedding?
My wife,myself and the witnesses signed the register but the certificate was produced by a clerk.
We were not given the opportunity to sign the certificate.

About what Joan said on page 2 about the varying X marks - they can be really interesting and varied. I have even seen one entry where a woman named Mary married and rather than putting an X she put a single letter M down as "her mark" (which is often written round the record). I found it intriguing - I wondered if she was literate or not and if somehow she had learnt enough to be able to write her initial.