Same couple married twice - why?

[meljade]

Hi,

I have the same couple - John Little and Janet Crozier who appeared to have married twice within a 2 year period.

1) 11 Aug 1807 in Kelso, Roxburghshire
2) 11 Aug 1809 Cavers, Roxburghshire

Any ideas why this would be?

[majm]

Do you have copies of each of those marriage certificates? 

Are there any comments in the margins or elsewhere on the 1807 one to suggest that it was not a lawful marriage?

How were the bride and the groom described on the 1807 document ...... spinster, bachelor ?

How were the bride and the groom described on the 1809 document?

Are their signatures on the documents, and if so, can you offer comment when comparing the signatures?

Cheers,  JM

[meljade]

The two entries are listed on a subscription site under Scotland Marriages 1561-1910.  There are no images available for the transcribed entries.

I have the certificate for the 1809 marriage found on scotlandspeople, the 1807 marriage cert is not listed on the site.  The marriage certificate is scant on details - no witnesses listed or parent names or other information that could give clues, only the bride/groom from there parishes.

Is it possible the 1807 transcribed entry is incorrect? I suppose this could be the case.

[majm]

These are indexes for transcriptions based on actual records that volunteers have independently transcribed: -

https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XYQG-94J

11 March 1809, Cavers,Roxburgh,Scotland


and


https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XYQR-95R

11 May 1807 Kelso,Roxburgh,Scotland

.....  There are no images available for the transcribed entries. .....

It is simply not possible for anyone to transcribe a parish register unless the image of that register or the actual register is actually available. 

Have you sought out the original register?  Does it cover marriages in Cavers and in Kelso? 

Could there be mis-reads .... yes of course there could be.   

You would need to check the date for the enty immediately before and immediately after and determine if there's any in 1808, or earlier in 1809, or later in 1807.    And you would need to check if it reads March or May or August in which ever year .... 

    

Cheers,  JM

[clairec666]

A few possibilities:

1) It's actually the same marriage, but the date has been mistranscribed in one case, and the place names have been mixed up. I've found this a few times on Familysearch - baptisms appearing on the same date in two different parishes. Best to look at the original records for both parishes.

2) It's not the same couple, just a big coincidence!

3) The first marriage wasn't legal - one party was already married - so they married again later once they'd been "found out".

4) It's possible that the first transcription is for banns, and the marriage never took place. Maybe the bride was underage, her parents refused permission,  and they married two years later when she was old enough.

[Jomot]

The 1807 entry has the film reference 1068242, which doesn't relate to Kelsoe parish registers but to marriage announcements from weekly newspapers in Kelsoe.

http://www.rootschat.com/links/01h7b/

The film numbers for 1809 are from the parish records

http://www.rootschat.com/links/01h79/
http://www.rootschat.com/links/01h7a/

[ecksdochter]

Hello,
     ScotlandsPeople is the official government website for Births, Marriages & Deaths in Scotland and if 'meljade' has viewed the marriage entry on ScotlandsPeople, then she has viewed the original entry, not a transcribed version. There are no marriage entries on SP for 11th May 1807 at Kelso so the transcriber may have made a mistake. Might be worth contacting SP just to doublecheck.
     Transcribed entries are not always accurate. I've just found a transcribed Census Return where families from 3 different streets have been run together as one family, where an 18yr old boy (not even the head of his own household) has 15 wives & numerous children, some as old as himself. The 'Head' of each household is listed as a Housemaid & every daughter is listed as Doctor. Each Household has its own Schedule Number so an error like this should never happen.
               Regards,     Dod.

[lydiaann]

I think meljade viewed this on Ancestry under Scotland Marriages, Dod, and not under the ScotlandsPeople website.  I am of the opinion that someone misread the year, as both the day and month are identical.  As the SP notation says 1809, I would count that as the actual date.

[Josephine]

I have seen a few instances where a marriage was noted in two separate registers: once in the register for the town/city where the groom was from and again in the register for the town/city where the bride was from. I don't know why.

In my experience, it is worthwhile to purchase both images from ScotlandsPeople, because different clerics might have recorded slightly different information. In some cases, the marriage entry in one register recorded the names of the bride's and groom's fathers, whereas the other one didn't.

I would make the search of the ScotlandsPeople index as wide as possible. For example, I would search the OPR Marriages for surname Little, with surname variants, in Roxburghshire between 1800-1815; if that yielded more than 25 results, I would pare down the time frame, but would keep it between 1805-1810, in an effort to catch both results.

If the 1807 record still doesn't show up on ScotlandsPeople, perhaps you could email them, just in case it has been mistranscribed somehow.

It might be worth hunting for!

Good luck!
Josephine