Catholic Marriage Records, Birmingham Diocese 1850

[Alic]

I have received courtesy of FamilySearch a scan of a record from Most Holy Trinity RC Church, Bilston, Staffordshire, for a marriage between James Withers and Mary Anne Davies on 3rd October 1850.  The details contained in the record are only:

Date of the marriage
Names of the spouses
Name of the priest
Names of the witnesses

I have a couple of questions: Does this look like a "short" record based on a bigger entry/certificate, and if so are the archives for Birmingham Diocese, at St Chads, likely to contain more information such as the Fathers' details/ages of spouses and other things you would normally expect to see on a Marriage Certificate?  I have been unable to find a record for this marriage in the GRO Indexes.

Also, did the registration of Marriages in Catholic Churches begin at the same date as for other establishments?

I am likely to be going up to Birmingham in the next few months and wanted to prepare as much in advance to use my time well at St Chads (I understand you have to make an apoointment to look at records).

Any help/hints would be appreciated.

Forgot to say that the record in question is the last one on the page.

[Joney]

Hi Alic,
I'm afraid that's all you're likely to get on most Catholic marriages at the time. You get extra info, such as fathers' names  and everyone's addresses, once the parish starts using a register with pre-printed columns. You've nothing to lose by asking them if there's any other note made against this entry in the margin, however.

Have you tried the GRO marriage indexes with variants of the surnames on this photograph ?

My own Irish ancestors are 'making their mark', (ie.signing with  an X) well into the 1870s, so will not have had any idea that their surnames were being scrambled.  I've found McGuirk, McGurk and Maguirke recorded at various times as a result for the same family.

 A legal marriage could only be performed in a C of E church or in a register office in 1850, as I understand it.
A marriage in a Catholic church with no registrar would not have been a legal marriage, but would have been regarded as such by Catholics at the time. I have seen a case on Rootschat,  in the Lancashire section, where a couple are married twice in the same day in Liverpool, once in a C of E and again in a Catholic church to get round the problem.



Best wishes,
Joney

[Alic]

Joney

Thanks for that, especially the info about the marriage in a RC Church in 1850 not being legal.  I didn't realise that. 

I have found the first three marriages on that page in the GRO Indexes (where one surname was given as Cain rather than the Kane that shows on the scan) and tried searching on various forms of Withers after finding in Irish records such variations as Weathers, Whithers and Wheathers, as well as Davis rather than Davies.  But no luck. 

So, if the couple did not get married (for a second time) in a C of E Church/Register Office, then does that mean that the marriage would not appear in the GRO Indexes?  I do know that the couple went off to Ireland shortly after the marriage.

Thanks again, I will keep searching.

[jim1]

The biggest change as a result of the Marriage Act was that, from 1837, marriages didn't have to take place in a church and now had the alternative of having the marriage ceremony take place in a local register office.  Anglicans, Jews and Quakers continued to conduct and register their own marriage ceremonies. For religious ceremonies, there were two new registers, one of which stayed with the church, synagogue or meeting house and the other was sent to the registrar. Other denominations had to apply for their places of worship to be licensed to conduct marriages and could only conduct a ceremony there if, as well as the minister, a registrar was also present to record the events in a Register Office marriage register.

This is pretty much what Joney has said. If Holy Trinity was licensed at the time there will be a pre printed form to fill in identical to the certificate this will be in the marriage register at St. Chad's.
If a Registrar was present there will be a certificate. As there's no certificate one would have to assume there wasn't one there.
You do have to make an appointment.

[DudleyWinchurch]

Hi Alic,

that is the full form of the church register for Holy Trinity for that time.  However, there should be a matching register entry on the Staffordshire BMDs. As the registrar took full particulars, the church doesn't seem to have found it necessary to keep any further details.

Occasionally there may be a discrepancy between the spellings of the names between the church register and the registrars copy.

[DudleyWinchurch]

There will not be another entry in St. Chad's register. The Holy Trinity register is now deposited as St Chad's but what you will normally see at the Archives there is the film copy, exactly what you already have.

The only additional details will be the civil registration.

[added: However that does appear to be missing from FREEBMD]

[DudleyWinchurch]

There were another 3 marriages at Holy Trinity that October, all of which appear on the same civil register page, according to the FREEBMD index. This suggests that the one that you are looking for is accidentally missing.

I haven't come across that before but I would normally only cross-check for the particular ones that I am interested in.

[dawnsh]

I would be tempted to contact the register office and ask them to check out their copy of the register for that date and apply directly to them for a copy.

http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/genuki/reg/districts/wolverhampton.html

Depends if you are satisfied that this is the correct couple and that a cert for £10 is nice to have or whether you really do need a copy to ascertain if these are your family members.

[stanmapstone]

There were another 3 marriages at Holy Trinity that October, all of which appear on the same civil register page, according to the FREEBMD index.

These marriages were registered in the September ¼ 1850, so it looks as though those marriages took place in a register office, with a subsequent religious ceremony in the church in October.

Stan