Genealogy Chat

I was looking for ages for the marriage of my GGFx2 - from the age of the kids it would appear he should have married about 1836. But the only man I could find with his name in bmd married in the right area but in 1854 - also I knew from the 1851 census his bride should be a Mary Ann. But I got one of those pages where there are 5 men and 3 women on the marriage record, if you know what I mean. So I discounted it. Anyway, I have now managed to find his wife's maiden name through a birth cert of the youngest child (the only registered one!) AND, guess what, she is on the 1854 record but on the next page with the other poor bride left off. My question is, will it be a big problem to get a copy of the cert if the bride and groom are on different pages? Also, just shows you, 18 years out - who would have believed it?

Hi Are you sure that you're looking at the same generation? If they were married ca 1836, then that would be before formal registration - which started only in the Sept quarter of 1837. You might be looking at marriage info one generation later? Christine

On the other hand, sometimes people only got around to marrying rather later than the recommendation of "before you start a family" - like right at the end! Christine

Is there any chance you could check with the local register office? It seems odd that the bride & groom aren't on the same page. They should certainly have the same reference. If you're lucky and the office is one of those online, you can often check for an accurate match of bride & groom names before you start - their search systems vary but the majority are very good - and they tell you quite precisely where they were married. [The local references aren't the same as the GRO ones.] The fees are the same and the certs arrive at least as fast as ordering from GRO online, even though it goes both ways by post. Christine

No Christine, thats why I first disregarded it when I was looking for him. He is the only one with that name in the whole of London in all the records I checked for about 20 years. I knew her first name from the 1851 Stepney census but as it did not appear as any of the brides names on his page I just thought, so long after they set up home, not possible. None of the kids were registered til the last one in 1850 - so I sent for her cert and there was mums name. So I fed that into the bmd and she came up on the very next page to the man. He is page 432, she is 433. His son, same name died as a child and would have only been about 12 in 1854. His eldest son was married 1868. In actual fact, not being on the same page isnt that unusual, found my Great Aunt on a page on her own too!

If you only know for sure, via the birth cert., that Mary Ann was mother of youngest child is it possible she was a second wife and that the marriage did take place in the 1850's? However the bride and groom couldn't appear on different pages of the register - as the marriage entry is made on one page of the register. (The certificate is then a copy of that page entry) If you got the page numbers from FreeBMD perhaps one of the numbers has been mistranscribed. 2 and 3 could look very similar in bad handwriting. When you find one partner and not the other it means that BMD hasn't completed the transcription for that quarter (or possibly the name wasn't on the GRO index to start with, but they would still both be named on the marriage entry in the register. If you post both names and the page references that you have found I have a few spare 1837 credits and could check for you. Judith