licences

[tobin]

hi
can anyone tell me if marriage licences are held anywhere? nathaniel hall married november 1829 at st johns newcastle to ann hackworth,the marriage entry states that nathaniel is from the st andrews parish and ann of this parish but the wedding was by licence and not banns.And does the licence give any details extra to what the marriage entry says??
many thanks
pat

[stanmapstone]

The actual Ecclesiastical Licences were issued to the bridegroom who presented it to the priest conducting the marriage. The licence could then have been kept by the priest, or returned to the diocesan registries, or given to the couple on their wedding day and kept within the family.

Stan

[JenB]

Pat,

Durham University Library hold a lot of marriage licences. I have recently seen photocopies of several which a friend has acquired from them, and in these the licences did have extra information.

Try emailing ann.robinson@durham.ac.uk for more information.

Jennifer

[stanmapstone]

Are these not the Licence bonds and allegations? The question was about the Marriage Licences.

Licence bonds and allegations
DDR/EJ/MLA/1      ca.1664-1995

283 boxes and 57 mini trays (some boxes over-full)
The marriage allegations generally provide more information about the parties than the bonds, including their marital status, recent places of residence and (frequently, but not always) their occupations. Their ages may be given precisely, or the affidavit may just state that a party is over 21.
Attached to most of the marriage licence applications for ca.September 1822 to March 1823 are copies of baptismal certificates and duplicate marriage licences.
See http://flambard.dur.ac.uk/dynaweb/handlist/ddr/ddrguide/@Generic__BookView

Stan

[tobin]

hi
thankyou to all that answered and i will try both links and see if i can find anything.

maybe someone out there will give me an idea of what else to try,as im at a brickwall and am spending many hours banging my head off it in frustration.

my 3x maternal grandfather was nathaniel hall,his marriage cert to catherine turnbull dates his age to being born 1829,his death cert also backs this as do all the census entrys for him from 1861 but he doesnt appear on any census prior to his marriage,place of birth newcastle upon tyne,in his marriage cert he names his father as nathaniel hall a butcher.this is where my troubles begin i think that his father is nathaniel hall a butcher living in newcastle born gosforth 1804 as i cant find any other nathaniel halls who are butchers around this time.there is a marriage for a nathaniel hall and ann hackworth in november 1829 as i previously said,but if his birth year of 1829 is correct then ann was either heavily pregnant or had already given birth.i can find no baptism entry for nathaniel in 1829 or surrounding years in any of the church records for newcastle,though there is an entry for a edward pearson hall son of nathaniel and ann in 1830,and two other children thomas and isabella both children of nathaniel and ann (i have there birth certs) born later,by 1841 census nathaniel snr is a widower and the three children edward thomas and isabella can all be found with various family members.nathaniel snr never remarried and died 1869,but i cant tie nathaniel 1829 with this family or any other family.and im at a loss where to check next or where else i could look for any answers or clues.if the marriage licence gave details of occupations that could narrow it down to whether nathaniel was a butcher.in the baptism entry for edward pearson hall in 1830 it states a victualler,would a butcher be classed as this??though by the 1841 census nathaniel snrs occupation is agent?

hope this makes sense and someone out there can point me in a direction that could give me a clue,before i completely lose it....

many thanks pat

[Michael Dixon]

Pat,

Working backwards from an age on a marriage cert or a census , to determine a year of birth , can be out by a year, even if the original age starting point correct !
 Depends in which month of year the birth took place and the marriage/census !

e.g.

Man marries July 1854 . His age is recorded simply as 25 years of age. 

As well as been born in 1829, ( 1854 minus 25 years) he could have been born in late 1828
If he was born,  say December 1828 he would have been  25 years and 7 months when he married (and various variations).

Michael Dixon

[tobin]

hi
thanks for your reply,i have checked a couple of years either side of 1829 to see if there is anything but as yet nothing,ive even put in just a first name in ancestry place of birth and year to see if it brings up anything for 1841/51 census but again nothing that fits.

pat

[peter brownlee]

If this is of any help, the 1861 census expands the elder Nathaniel's occupation to Commision Agent that is a posh variety of bookie. The head of the household in which he seems to have lived most of his later life is his unmarried half sister Elizabeth Davison. In 1871 he is described as a cow keeper like his half brother Cuthbert. Prudhoe street is in the middle of the town of Newcastle so they must have been urban cowkeepers. The most likely thing is that they leased grazing for their cows from the Freemen on the town moor which lies between Newcastle and Gosforth. My father worked for a milkman who kept beasts there in the 1930s. In Nathaniel's day it was also a venue for sporting occasions. So far as I know, the profession of victualler is usually applied to suppliers of ship's food stores, which would largely be salt meat.

[tobin]

hi
thanks for that i did wonder what the agent and commission agent meant.i had noticed that he always lived with his half brother and sister,and he did up until his death never remarrying which i found rather odd for a man with small children,especially when the wife died before 1841 so the children would have been very small.
i guess the occupation of victualler could fit in with his first occupation of butcher.any idea what sort of area prudhoe street would have been?would they be classed as well off?im just wondering if there was a will?

pat