Genealogy Chat

Just this week I received a copy of a marriage certificate where the bride's father is shown as Janet Matthews, the same as his daughter and I too thought the clerk/vicar must have lost concentration when writing.

Fathers 1st wife was called Jane, she was buried 2nd June 1829, his 2 nd wife was called Ann (not yet found marriage for her) and their child Sarah was baptised on 17th June 1829, so only 15 days after death of 1st wife, hence wondering if got names wrong in Parish register. Val

Did first and second wife have the same Christian name, and what was gap between death of first and marriage to second? It is possible that husband marries pregnant girlfriend on death of first wife. The one thing that is most unlikely is that a child is palmed off as legitimate. It might happen in London or other large cities, but not in the provinces. Is Sarah baptised before or after first wife's death? Might second wife be nonconformist, so John's baptism not recorded in parish register? If Bishop's transcripts survive, they might show slightly different information. Brenda

This John we worked out age from Census returns, marriage cert just states full age. We looked through parish batisms for several years before and after the date of 1829, We found 2 brothers who were born before him and died young. Then fathers 1st wife died in childbirth having John, and in the upset no one thought to get him baptised, or father has another relationship on the side at the same time with the result that a Sarah is born around same time as John, or the parish record is wrong, or wife number 2 was a widow expecting a baby who father claimed as his. too many ors. lol

In theory, parish registers by this time should have be written up at the time. In practice, marriage registers were the only ones that had to be, because the couple and the witnesses all had to sign them. Information was often written in rough first, and carefully copied up later. Sometimes the entries were so brief that it was impossible to tell whether it referred to a baptism or a burial, so the clerk entered it in both places! They could also become mislaid: used to light fires, pipes etc. The minister could be deaf, or slipshod, or there could be an ambiguity as to the child's sex. There are mistakes of every conceivable type in parish registers, as there are in documents of any kind. It is also possible, however, that you have found a sibling, and the person you are looking for was either younger or older. It is helpful to extract baptismal details for all siblings: to help guess the mother's age, in case additional information appears on one entry, and to form a better picture of the family as a whole. Brenda

Hi, Sarah could have been a late baptism. Some of my Suffolk lot had a habit of only getting the last child baptised when Mum was heavily pregnant with the next. Gwynne

Just looking into one where it looks as if the surname has been entered as Bolton instead of Boten.

Has anyone come across errors in entering the names on parish registers? we once found the vicar had got a mothers name wrong on one birth record in Wiltshire. Yesterday we went to view a birth record in Somerset for 1829, and found the right father but a daughter Sarah instead of a son John. Is it possible that the vicar thinking of something else might have put the wrong name?