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Marriage Certificates

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Karen

Karen Report 16 Dec 2003 21:28

Can someone tellme how much info I need to order a marriage cert. I know the city and suburb, the year and the names of bride and groom. On another local genealogy site it says that the people searching for certs in register offices will not find them unless the year quarter and exact church is known. Is this right, or do I have enough to go on? Karen

Karen

Karen Report 16 Dec 2003 21:32

Hi Karen You would need the quarter and district to be able to order the certificate. If you can't find them easily, you can request that somebody at the General Register Office carries out a search for you, but this will incur a fee. Have you tried the FreeBMD or 1837 online sites? If you have both surnames you should be able to find a match, and from that get the quarter and district. Good luck Karen

Shelli4

Shelli4 Report 16 Dec 2003 21:34

Karen My local reg office wouldn't search for a marriage, even tho i knew the year/quarter. They said i need to know the church, as there is too many to search through. Have you lookedon FreeBMD or 1837, if you know the year you should be able to find it easy enough. then you could aply to Southport for it Shelli

David

David Report 16 Dec 2003 23:19

This is not my experience - I have used the Wigan Register Office regularly and they have found numerous marriage certs for me, without me specifying the church (often haven't known this) or quarter (i.e. I have provided names of both partners and a year) - they have even done free 5 year searches! Sound like I may have been lucky - guess it depends on how they organise their Index locally and maybe how many churches would need searching. David

Guinevere

Guinevere Report 17 Dec 2003 06:57

Hi, Local register offices vary in how helpful they can be. Some London offices now refuse all family history requests and refer applicants to Southport. According to an article in a Fam His magazine I read a while ago this practice is spreading. Their priorities are current registration and Fam His requests have to wait for a "quiet" time. Understaffed offices just don't have the time to do searches anymore. As genealogy increases in popularity more and more offices will probably refuse requests, which is sad. Gwynne

Researching:
Lowestoft and North Suffolk, Monmouthshire, Breconshire, Somerset

BobClayton

BobClayton Report 17 Dec 2003 13:39

There was a discussion about this some time back. Church should not be required but often is, depends on the office and what system they use. The county BMD's will hopefully solve this. The referring of people to GRO ( mainly in London I think ) is worse than sad because some records only exist at local level. Bob

Researching:
Clayton