Hopefully, you will now have a copy of a marriage certificate that will take you through to the next generation and provide clues for an even earlier generation.

Step 1 – Marriage certificates

What information does a marriage certificate give us?

• 1.Marriage date
• 2.Names of those married
• 3.Ages of those married
• 4.Condition – widow, single etc.
• 5.Occupation of those married
• 6.Addresses of those married
• 7.Names of both fathers
• 8.Occupation of both fathers
• 9.Witnesses

Example of a marriage certificate

Heading

This gives the place where the marriage was solemnised, usually the church or register office, and the registration district or parish, and the county. It is important to remember that the registration district will not always match the village or parish where the couple were living, especially in rural areas.

Directly beneath the details of the married couple you will be given more information about the religious denomination of the couple. For instance, Martino Marelli married Amy Plummer in 1891 at St George’s Catholic Church according to the rites of Roman Catholics. Some of their children have similar information but others have ‘according to the rites of the Established Church’ (the Church of England).

Entry number

A church will have two identical registers and when they are complete one book is deposited with the superintendent registrar, but the other is kept by the church authorities and may finish up in the county record office or in the local church.

Some 500 entry registers are as yet incomplete and it is quite possible that the information has never been passed to a superintendent registrar who will therefore have no record of the marriages in a church in their district. The GRO however takes this type of information quarterly which is why you will often find a certificate via the GRO where you may have failed via your local registrar.

Column 1: Date of marriage

A marriage entry is dated on the day a marriage took place. There are various ways of recording the dates of marriages as I found with the following:

27th April 1931
Sept 14th 1932
Twentieth January 1926
November 16 (with the year 1851 in the header)
May 1 1879

Column 2: Name and surname of bride and groom

It is important to remember that the name and surname of the bride and groom are not always as recorded on their birth certificates. Until later years they were not asked for proof of identity at the time of their marriage, simply the names they were known as. Therefore, they could use different Christian names as with Alice Amy Plummer who married using the name of Amy Plummer. Or in the case of Henry George Webber, who not only was known as George Henry on his marriage certificate, but also used the name of his stepfather rather than his birth-name. Some people were known by aliases for many different reasons and hid their true identities, others for bigamous reasons.

Column 3: Age at the date of marriage

Again the couple were not asked to prove their age or identity, so these dates could vary enormously from the truth. Reasons might be that they were under age, the bride might be older than her husband, or maybe they had to guess their ages as they did not have copies of their birth records. Also, if a couple stated they were 21 years of age or over, they were not required to give their ages and if they were in fact under age and married without the consent of their legal guardian, the marriage itself could be classed as illegal.

I have a marriage record dated May 1 1879 with the ages of the couple simply recorded as ‘full’, and another as ‘both of full age’. Interestingly, I have one ancestor Asor Zoar who had children previously from a relationship in which she was unmarried, but went on to marry someone else in 1911 aged 28 years. However, she records her age as 33 years maybe because the man she married was 50 years of age, or for reasons we can only speculate.

Column 4: Condition

This column records the marital status of the persons getting married, usually spinster, bachelor, widow or widower.

Of course, we have to allow for the possibility that one or the other might be lying as they might record themselves as single to avoid accusations of bigamy, or maybe they record themselves as a widow or widower when not actually married to the previous partner that they shared a home, life and children with.

If for some reason a previous marriage was annulled because of age or because the marriage was never consummated, or the female lied about being pregnant, they would revert to their previous condition and be recorded as single.

Divorce during the 19th century was a drawn-out and expensive process forcing couples to either stay together but live separate lives, to move into another relationship without marriage, or to marry bigamously.

Column 5: Occupation

The next column shows the occupation of both parties at the time of their marriage. If left blank or there is a line through this column it does not mean that the person concerned was not employed, especially if the marriage took place during the 19th century and the party concerned was female. Again, as with birth certificates, occupations could be embellished. One of my ancestors records himself as a provision dealer when he was a shop assistant.

Column 6: Residence at the time of marriage

The address at the time of the marriage can often be a misleading column. Couples would frequently marry away from the districts in which they lived for a variety of reasons. Maybe there was no suitable church where they resided, or perhaps there wasn’t a church of the correct religion locally. Also we have to remember that one or both parties would have to establish residency in the locations they wished to get married. Maybe they both went to stay with a relative, or maybe they both give the same address although one might be living elsewhere. Maybe one or both parties did not have a static address and lied about their place of residence or gave that of a friend or relative in order to get married. Sometimes you will find only the village or street recorded as the address in earlier certificates, such as one I have for my three times great grandfather that records the address for both parties as simply Stoke (Guildford).

Columns 7 and 8: Fathers’ names, surnames and rank or
professions

These two columns relate to the fathers of the bride and groom. The information in these columns should relate to the natural fathers of the couple in question but again the information can be misleading. My George Henry or Henry George Pudvine, although using the surname of his stepfather, does not record his father’s details on his marriage certificate. There could be several reasons for this – he knew that Frederick Pudvine was not his father, maybe he’d lost touch with Frederick or believed him to be deceased, and of course there is the possibility that he was never told who his true father was. Legally, he was required to add only the details of his natural father, but legally he wasn’t really a Pudvine.

Sometimes couples chose not to record the names of their fathers for personal reasons and although these columns were to be used only for natural parents, they were not obliged to fill in this information. However, I imagine that many people fabricated details of fathers where none existed to save embarrassment. Martino Marelli was brought up in a foundlings home in Milan and his parents are recorded as unknown, yet on his first marriage certificate he records his father as Martino Marelli, a carman (identical to himself), but on his second marriage certificate he records his father as Angelo Marelli, a farmer. Was there any truth in this? Maybe he was told his father’s name as a child in Milan. Maybe he fabricated a father, as he was of the Catholic faith and to be illegitimate was a stigma.

If a father was deceased at the time of the marriage it was usually recorded as such under the name but not always.

The occupation is the last column that will give the occupation of the father but if retired it will usually state that he is retired. Again, occupations are open to interpretation. For Martino, I have his occupations listed on his children’s marriage certificates as fishmonger, master fishmonger, shopkeeper, tradesman and restaurant proprietor. I know that he was a carman, then ice merchant, then fishmonger and finally he owned a chain of fish and chip shops, so all of the descriptions are correct although different.

When relying on occupations to verify an ancestor it is wise to remember that some occupations had several descriptions but the meaning could be the same.

The line beginning with ‘married in’

After rites and ceremonies underneath the details of the couple married, the last part starting with the word ‘by’ and followed with ‘by me’ or ‘after and by me’ will have the following possibilities:

• ‘by certificate’ = found on a register office marriage and shows that the couple gave three weeks’ notice,
• ‘by licence’ = means the couple may have married with less than three weeks’ notice. Maybe they needed to marry in a hurry or maybe there was another reason for the short notice, such as moving away,
• ‘after banns’ = Church of England marriage,
• ‘by common licence’ = Church of England marriage meaning a licence has been granted by the Bishop of the diocese,
• ‘by special licence’ = Church of England, with the licence issued by the Archbishop allowing the couple to marry in a church of their choice,
• ‘by registrar generals’ = found on any denomination except if a marriage was by the Church of England rites, the licence was issued for special reasons allowing a couple to get married at any time or place due to the impending death of one of the party,
• ‘by superintendent registrars certificate’ = a Church of England marriage but instead of banns being called in the church publicly, notice of marriage has been given to the superintendent registrar. Reasons for this could include a need to keep the marriage private by the church or for the party in question. Having banns read out meant that anyone could view these records and create problems for the couple in question if perhaps one was of another religion or latterly if a couple was divorced.

The signatures at the bottom of the certificate

These signatures include those of the married couple and their witnesses. Although they are supposed to be signatures, their names are frequently written in full and do not give a true indication of a proper signature for verification purposes.

Generally, witnesses should be personally known to the bride or groom but again it is possible that the witnesses have been hired or pulled in from the street in some instances. Witnesses should be carefully scrutinised as more often than not they can be family members, married sisters, nieces or nephews, brothers or sisters, mothers, aunts and uncles. Usually there are two witnesses but sometimes you will find several witnesses on a certificate.

The last signature on the certificate is for the person or persons conducting the ceremony. Register office marriages have two signatures which are those of the superintendent conducting the ceremony and that of the registrar who is doing the registration. The Church of England marriages have just the signature of the cleric, in the main.

The certificate has the date the certificate was issued, the same day usually. If there are any corrections to be made on a marriage certificate you will find these in the space to the right of the certificate, otherwise you will find a line drawn through it. Although it is possible to find corrections have been added after a line was drawn through this space.

Each piece of information is a valuable source and should be studied at length. We now have the exact date of the marriage. We also have the age at the time of the marriage of both parties giving us a huge clue to finding birth certificates but also the names of each of their fathers, taking us to another generation.

As stated earlier, witnesses should not be discounted. In the case of Albert Marelli the witnesses appear to be no relation, but a female member of the Marelli family may have married someone by the name of Spiller. Quite often you will find that witnesses are other family members and therefore should always be investigated.

What this marriage certificate doesn’t give us is the birthplace of both Lilian and Albert.

Step 2 – Options available to source birth records

I now have two options to follow:

• 1.The 1901 Census – as both parties were living at this time or as both parties have unusual names, i.e. Marelli and Lilian Lucretia, I could try the birth index.
• 2.For this exercise I am going to search births and my first port of call again is going to be FreeBMD.

I can be fairly certain that this is my Albert as he married in 1912, aged 19. Taking 19 from 1912 = 1893, but looking at his birth certificate you can see although his birth-date is 1892 he was not registered until 1893.

I wonder if locating Lilian’s birth details will be as simple – apparently so, this time.

Do I have the correct record? Yes, I think so. There was only one birth that came up on my search for Lilian Lucretia but it is important to remember that FreeBMD is an ongoing project and not yet complete. Therefore I have a seed of doubt at this juncture even though the year is correct, i.e. 20 – 1912 – 1892, because the birthplace is Axminster! So where is Axminster and how did Lilian end up in Wandsworth? I decided to click on the spectacles and save a PDF file of this index for Lilian and then look into the registration district by clicking on ‘Axminster’ on the information line, to find out more about the registration district of Axminster.

Step 3 – Sourcing district information

BRITISH ISLES GENEALOGY

GEM KI Contents & Site Map

As I have details from Lilian’s marriage certificate, I know that she was alive in 1901. I also know that she would have been roughly 9 years old and that her father was Frederick Stone Chappell. So the next step will be to search the 1901 Census for Lilian Chappell with a father called Frederick Stone Chappell in the Axminster area, presuming that she might still be living there as a child, unless the whole family moved to the Wandsworth area.

Step 4 – 1901 Census

Go to the www.Ancestry.co.uk site on the Internet. You will need to register to view records on this site but there are cost options available. See the tips at the end of this chapter.

Once you have registered, select the 1901 Census for England.

As you can see the age and year of birth is right.

This looks as if it could be the correct record because it lists a Frederick Chappell as head of the family, as per her marriage certificate, and Lilian L. Chappell as daughter. You can now print a copy or save to file.

Lyme Regis is listed in the Genuki information above as being part of the registration district of Axminster. Let’s take a closer look at the information recorded on the 1891 Census compared with the 1901 Census.

If you compare the two you will see how little information was taken in 1841 compared with the later census.

But by as early as 1851 the information recorded on the census had become more informative.

The 1851 Census forms offer a lot of important information to be gleaned about your ancestors and their neighbours. When recording information taken from the Census it is important to document the following:

Piece: RG13/ and the number following, i.e. RG13 / 1567
Folio number
Page number
Enumeration district
Administrative county
Civil parish
Parish
Town or hamlet

If for any reason the information you source is different from what you expected or what your family expected, don’t forget to write an explanation as to why you believe you have the correct ancestor and how you sourced them.

I now have details of Lilian’s brother and his age, her father’s age and the name of her mother, Susan, and Susan’s age. Having produced such a result for the Chappell family on the 1901 Census, the next most obvious step is to look for information concerning the Marelli family in 1901 and this is what I found.

What an amazing outcome! When I viewed the original Census, I found Albert Marelli and his whole family. What is more thrilling is the name of Martino’s father-in-law, William Plummer.

So Albert’s mother is Amy Marelli née Plummer, and yes, thanks to the Census, we can go back another generation on this branch of the family tree, as we now have the name of Amy’s father.

There is a bit of a mystery though. Amy Plummer was born in 1868 but Ada, her daughter, was born in 1881 and Matilda, another daughter, in 1883. That means Amy would have been only aged 13 and 15 respectively when they were born. Martino must have been married previously or Amy was a child bride!

Step 5 – Reading certificates and types of certificates

Again, I already had copies of these certificates and we are going to look at them next for two very interesting reasons.

As you can see, Lilian Chappell’s certificate is typed and provides us with the information required to trace another branch of our tree, that of Susan Chappell née Lugg who is the mother of Lilian. What is of particular interest to me is that this certified copy of her birth was issued for the purposes of Widow’s Orphan’s and Old Age Contributory Pensions on 19th March 1948.

The next birth certificate for Albert Marelli was produced in compliance with the National Insurance Act of 1911 as required by The Oddfellows Society. The schedule was filled in by the person concerned, then sent to the superintendent registrar of the district of Albert’s birth where the birth certificate details were copied onto the back of the form.

When searching for a birth certificate record in Civil Registration it is important to remember that a child was not always registered at the time of birth. Very often it was a few months or a few years later, or in some cases you will discover that a birth was never registered.

Certificates should be studied meticulously for information that will help you build the story of your ancestry.

Step 6 – Updated family tree

Although I am tempted to add other family members I have discovered via the Census, for the benefit of clarity I have resisted the temptation!

I still think it’s pretty impressive for the amount of work carried out this far.

There are many facts that should be added to our database, such as sources like the Census and certificates we have gathered, but we will look at storing and recording your family history later in this book.

Recap

• 1.Resource a marriage certificate from information taken from a birth certificate, or acquire a marriage certificate of parent, grandparent etc.
• 2.A marriage certificate will provide you with ages of both parties, enabling you to source their birth certificates and the names and occupations of their fathers, which in turn will enable you to source their fathers’ marriage certificates.
• 3.Choose the most cost effective option, i.e. FreeBMD to source records before moving on to paying sites.
• 4.If a person you are looking for was alive at the time a Census was taken, use this resource to help you find other documents.
• 5.Record all the reference information found on a Census page for future generations to source, and for referral purposes.
• 6.Keep all your records together with a sketched tree of your findings if you don’t already have relevant software.
• 7.The total cost so far is:

  Annual UK Deluxe Membership with Ancestry.co.uk	£69.95
  Cost of three certificates	£21.00
  Total	£90.00

 Tips

• 1.Remember, if you plan to use Ancestry.co.uK on a regular basis, men an annual membership is far more cost-effective. There are cheaper options such as monthly or pay-per-view. Alternatively you can pay via findmypast.com which I will show you in the next chapter.
• 2.Don’t run out and purchase software to store your information without investigating the various packages available. More information about software in Chapter 5.
• 3.Study the pages surrounding the address of your ancestor. Viewing other Census pages (neighbours) could produce other family members and will provide information about their social history.
• 4.Study certificates thoroughly. When purchasing several at once, it is easy to miss a valuable piece of information. Keep going back over documents every so often. It is amazing what comes to light as you become more experienced.
• 5.Study the sites available and find out what other resources they offer; they are being updated on a regular basis.
• 6.Try to remain focused on the person or persons you are searching for. It is easy to get sidelined into other members of the family such as finding siblings on the Census. Print off copies or record the information for researching or adding to your family histories when you have completed the task in hand.
• 7.If for any reason the information you source is different from what you expected or what your family expected don’t forget to write an explanation as to why you believe you have the correct ancestor and how you sourced them.
• 8.When searching for birth certificate records in Civil Registration remember that a child was not always registered at the time of birth, very often it was a few months, a few years later, or in some cases you will discover that a birth was never registered.