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Wales (Counties as in 1851-1901) => Glamorganshire => Wales => Glamorganshire Lookup Requests => Topic started by: Trinityquiet on Thursday 28 January 16 20:27 GMT (UK)
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Hello, I'm looking for help with the marriage record for Benjamin James and Margaret Evans in Merthyr Tydfil, 1864. I'm new to Welsh genealogy, so not sure if I'm looking for one or two documents here.
Here's what I know:
Benjamin James, Jan-Feb-Mar quarter, 1864 Merthyr Tydfil vol 11a pg 519 line 19
Thanks for reading!
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That reference is from the GRO Indexes.
If you use FreeBMD to find that marriage, and click on the page number, you can see all the names recorded on the same page.
Davies, David
Evans, Margaret
James, Benjamin
Smith, Miriam
You can use the reference to get the marriage certificate from the GRO.
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Is this something I can only order, or is a look up request okay?
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Unfortunately you have to buy!
The laws of England & Wales don't permit looking at the details ::)
See: https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/
The cost is £9.25.
You could, of course, find the Parish Register entry, but you will need to know what church?
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Thanks! I'm guessing Merthyr Tydfil was too big in 1864 for me to be able to find out which church they were married in? Or is there some other angle I should look from that I don't know about?
Is there truly enough information in the marriage certificates to justify ordering? I've only started learning about this today, but it seems they only offer the names of those married, not their birth dates or parents' information. Is that correct? Or am I getting confused with banns?
And a last embarrassing question while I'm on a roll...just to make sure I'm not completely wrong... A parish is a church, right, subject to all the usual church definitions and uses? :)
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A Marriage Certificate from England or Wales will contain:
Name, age (or "of full age"!), status, occupation, address (at the time of marriage) - of both bride & groom.
Names and occupations of both fathers.
Names of the witnesses.
From that information, you should be able to find father & son, or father and daughter, in the censuses.
Or be able to find a Birth Registration.
FreeBMD.org.uk is very helpful.
And your local library may have free-to-use versions of Ancestry or FindMyPast.
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Merthyr Tydfil Registration District consisted of 9 parishes.
But that only accounts for Anglican (Church of England/Wales) parishes.
They may have married in a chapel?
And there are over 60 chapels & churches in Merthyr!
See: http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/wal/GLA/MerthyrTydfil/#Churches
They might also have married in a Register Office - in which case, there will be no parish record.
For a definition of parish, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parish_%28Church_of_England%29
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Ooooh, a treasure trove! I can't wait to order ;D Thanks for the explanations and definitions.
I've always avoided international genealogy. It truly is like being a beginner again. Everything is different. But maybe starting here won't be so bad :) Thanks!
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The local library does have ancestry, BTW. I just don't get there often. I only got internet again two weeks ago after a year without. The same day, a cemetery caretaker got back to me out of the blue from a very old query, offering proof that Benjamin James was my ancestor. Now I'm knee deep lol
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I checked the parish marriages available online for your Benjamin when I was looking up on your other thread. The marriage isn't online. I wouldn't have suggested buying the cert if the info was easily available.
It may have been a non-conformist marriage or a register office one or just not online. More than half the population of Wales was non-conformist by this time.
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Now I know :) I at least learned a lot by asking!
I've had a lot of people encourage me to buy records in the past that were online, or simply completely useless. I'm genuinely glad that this is going to be worth buying, this will be fun. :) I'm accustomed to records being accessible in their entirety, or at least able to be circumvented. I've never needed one before that had so much data that can't be found otherwise.