Genealogy Chat

Hello,sorry to be a pain in the neck,But where do you start with search for poss marriage of someone..I have got ancestry on 14 day trial,and have been on there for days ..but still cant do it..I am trying so hard honest!!! I really wanted to narrow some names down before I have to cancel..in a few days,..Please ant tips would be great.

Hi Christine,

If you know the name of one of the parties and their date of birth, but nothing else, then it is a case of trawling through page by page.

E.g. if you had John Smith born in 1918, then you could assume he wouldn't have married before age 18 (unlikely anway) and probably not after age 38 (although this does happen). Put in John Smith as name 1946 +/- 10 years as time and then you literally have to open up every index page and search.

One tip (depending on what version of internet explorer you are running) is to right click on the view image icon and "open in new tab", you can open up lots of the images one after the other and this saves time as you wait for each page to load.

If a quarter appears to be missing, then try a surname alphabetically before or after the one you are searching for. This is because if an entry is manually added at end of page, ancestry use this to index the page, not the actual last entry and so it can appear that some pages are missing.

Good luck - it is a long and boring task, I've had to do it with Roberts's which are nice and common!

Helen

This assumes you are searcing pre 1983 (I think), if post 1983 then easier as these are transcribed on Ancestry, or pre about 1920 are on freebmd.

Oh my goodness...
Helen you have talked me through brilliantly thankyou,and I will try again..Maybe freebmd would be easier then...So many marriages to try and find but its worth it...The name I have to find is Barrow and there seems to be so may of them too..
Many thanks Helen

Give us an example so we can try and tell you how.

But you should be working backwards so you buy the kids certs for the maiden name of the mother then look for the marriage to the father.

Hi Heather,
there are so many children in this family,
My Grandmother LILY BARROW BORN 1887
Daughter of William and Sarah nee Stonehouse Houghton le Spring.
Lily had many brothers and sisters some much older than herself..
I know about the oldest girls and I know all about Lily and a sister named Jane.(possibly)
But There is
William abt 1873
John abt 1875
Thomas abt 1877 there is a Robert who someone helped me with once and said poss marriage was to a Sarah Ann Wilson,
Its mind boggling

Christine,
I assume your asking about the marriage of William and Sarah (Lily's parents). If so, FreeBMD lists only one marriage of a William Barrow to a Sarah Stonehouse. That is in Mar. Qtr 1868 in Easington, which doesn't look too far away from Houghton-le-Spring. That gives about 19 years for the much older brothers and sisters you mention.

Hi,So sorry took so long,thought I had the day to myself and then ..someone came around....
I really am looking into the pos marriages of Sarah and Williams children
I have Margaret and Marys..
Possibly Janes
I have my Grandmothers Lily.
Would like to find William
John .,
and Thomas,would love to know if they went on to marry
Thankyou .
Such a large family

OK. The method I use in these circumstances is to find the siblings in all available censuses before they were married, then cross reference that with a search of FreeBMD with criteria set to the surname (Barrow) and county (i'm not to familiar with the area but it looks like Co.Durham, although you may need to do one on an adjacent county if applicable). Hopefully, you'll have a rough idea of when to expect the marriage, because they stop appearing in the "family home" census. NB. remember that it may be a case of them dying rather than marrying, so check death too. Once you have a potential marriage (or two) for each sibling, then check subsequent censuses for the couple and see if the details match (PoB,age, etc). Whilst not 100% foolproof, it will point you in the right direction. If you want to be certain, you'll obviously need to get the cert or check out parish records to confirm.
Hope this helps.

Rob

Thankyou Rob
I will try,yes it is Durham sorry.I think I need a few days on my own !!!
Thanks so much for your help and replying
Christine

Oh my giddy aunts..I am cross eyed, How you all do it so quickly is beyond me..

IS There anyone free to check on what I found and give me your opinion Please ,,

Durham's a nice area to look for marriages (aside from the fact that everyones called Robson). The GRO isn't the only place you can buy a m.cert - you can also buy one from the local RO where the marr was rego'ed. Most of the Co Durham ROs have their local indices online, and these specify who married whom, unlike the GRO where you have to guess between 2 (sometimes 4) spouses.
http://www.northeastbmd.org.uk/
NB At the Durham/Bishops Auckland site, search the local site for "church register" to identify the church's registery code on the pdf form.

Regarding Helen's tips on searching quarter by quarter - if the quarter seems to be missing, then Helen suggests using a nearby surname, and then using the green arrows at top to page back or forward. Bear in mind that you don't have to use a real surname, so if your "Trader" doesn't show up, you could look for "Tqx", say. You can also "view images" from the freeBMD main page, but their B/M/D images only run to 1960/45/35. It's quite a bit easier to look up images on Ancestry though.

Course, it's a bit late telling you this now. You should have gotten the marriages first, as what Ancestry has that's nice is births transcribed 1916 on, so you could like for all Robsons births with mmn Dixon or whatever (and don't forget the illeg. Dixon with mmn Dixon). There's no denying the census is the most useful thing there, but don't forget to check for WW1 medal cards and service records, and for potential emigrations.

Dear mgnv,
Wow..thankyou,you helped me many months ago,I have never forgotten!!
Thankyou so much
Christine

Just to say thankyou...and I did it!!!
Well found one anyway,
Many thanks for all your help
Christine...cross eyed..and drained