Wrong Father on Wedding Cert !!

[Steven1966]

This may seem like a daft question to some,but has anyone when researching relatives.Found that on say a Wedding Certificate,that the man who was getting married has ALSO  had his name and occupation entered under fathers name and occupation.

I have a relative who was born in 1852,Benjamin Clives.His parents were Stephen and Elizabeth Clives,his father was a Gun Barrell Filer.

When Benjamin got married in 1869 to Ann Simkiss he quotes his occupation as Gun Barrell Filer. Then his father is  listed as Benjamin who was also a Gun Barrell Filer !!!!.But his birth certificate list's his father as Stephen.

Has anyone else come across something like this before,OR have i got something hopelessly wrong ??.

Stephen

[claudia99]

Stephen,
If your realative did not have very good reading skills, it is always possible to have errors on certificates.
Even if he signed his own name, this may be the only thing he could write.
If he signed his name with a "X" - ie "the mark of Benjamin Clives" then it is definately the case.
I think you can only take the certificates as a guide - just a question, are you SURE its the right certificate?  Could he be the son of Benjamin Clives who may be, say, the brother of Stephen  - this may explain why the occupations are the same?
If you are sure that it is the right one, and all other evidence points to his father being called Stephen, then its possibly an error on the certificate.
One last observation, could his father be called Benjamin Stephen or Stephen Benjamin as several of my ancestors were known by their middle name but when it came to official documents used their first name.
Claudia

[JAP]

Stephen,

I hope someone will correct me if I'm wrong ; )

The marriage certificates which I have obtained from England & Wales, and also from Scotland, are not photocopies of the original registration in (say) the church register but are copies of transcriptions from it which were entered into the Statutory Register by the Registrar of the day.  Usually the marriage certificates which I have received are photocopies from the old Statutory Register but sometimes they are one step worse i.e. written out from the old Stat Reg by a present day clerk!  (Different from those I have in Australia - where I have actually received a copy of the original with the signatures of one's ancestors/relatives.)  This being the case, the possibilities for error are huge - as is the case with any transcription, much less transcriptions of transcriptions.

Yes, I've seen some really silly entries - including the name of the bride's father being entered with the correct forename but with the maiden surname of the bridegroom's mother instead of his own (and the bride's) surname!

JAP   

[Steven1966]

I'll answer Jap first.The certificates that i have are Scans/Photocopies of the originals.They are scanned onto official paper,with watermarks etc.So i get to see my relatives signatures (if they could write),even though they are copies.So that rules out any transcription errors made by a present day clerk copying them out.

Those silly enteries you talk of,were they on "original copies" or on certificates where a Present day clerk has copied them by hand and made a mistake
??.

Claudia

Looking at he wedding certificate first Benjamin couldn't write and signed with a X as was the case with his new bride and one of the witness's. 

Benjamin's birth certificate only has the one name "Benjamin" no middle name at all.His mother signed the birth certificate with a X,so i wouldn't be surprised if the father Stephen couldn't write either.Also after doing a search for Benjamin Clive's born around the time,this is the ONLY one that comes up and in the right area as well.

As for a possible brother called Stephen,there doesn't appear to be one.In fact in this line of the family,Benjamin's father appears to be the only Stephen.Where as certain other names seem to appear in every generation !!.




Stephen

[Valda]

Unless you are looking at photocopies of marriage entries from parish registers you are not looking at copies of the original. Every quarter the minister of each church made a copy of the entries in his register and sent them to the Superintendent Registrar. No check was done to see the minister did this correctly. Non-conformist churches and marriages in the registry office itself had their marriages entered directly into the district registrars' register. Copies were made of these marriages also and sent to the Superintendent Registrar. The Superintendant Registrar sent all these copied marriage entries to the central registry every quarter. Any certified copy from the Family Records Centre is therefore copy not an original. If you order a copy of the original certificate from the local registrar it is usually handwritten by a modern day clerk and depending whether the marriage took place in an Anglican church or elsewhere could be a modern copy of an older copy, or a modern copy of an original certificate.
Considering the amount of errors that occurred when the certificate was originally written at the marriage ceremony itself, unintentionally or intentionally, the errors that could have occurred when the certificate was copied and the errors that occurred when the information was copied by clerks ito make the central registry index and then retyped by modern day temps when those old handwritten registers wore out (typing not checked and old indexes thrown away) its not really surprising that there may be mistakes both on the certificate and in the central index at the Family Records Centre.

Regards
Valda

[Steven1966]

Valda

The photocopies i am looking at are from the GRO.So that would be a photocopy, of the hand written copy of the records that came from the local registra's office,which in turn are hand written copies of the records that came from the church.Have i got that right ??

I have over the past 18 months ordered several certificates from the GRO and the Local Registra's office.All so far have been photocopies,so does that mean that so far i havn't had a certificate that has been copied by a present day clerk !!.

If i have got all this right, then considering what you have said,with all this copying by hand,it is very easy to see where errors could be made.

Stephen

[JAP]

Stephen,

Valda has corroborated what I said.  And has elaborated on it in a very knowledgeable way which reveals that there were even more possibilities for error than I had suggested ; (

And yes, it seems that you probably haven't had one of those horrid certificates written out onto the official form by a present day clerk!

It's bad enough that we don't get to see the original entries in the church (or other) marriage register but when one gets not even a photocopy of a transcription made at the time of the event but, instead, some not particularly legible transcription made by a present day clerk, then one most certainly does not feel that one has received value for money!!  Despite the beautifully official, watermarked security (fugitive) paper and the official stamps!

I have a couple of these present-day clerk attempts from Sheffield in front of me at this moment - some of the information I can read only because I know what to expect but some of the names could be almost anything!  Grrr-rr-r.

But the whole question of getting certs written out by a present day clerk is really a side issue (red herring) - I probably shouldn't have mentioned it but did so for the sake of completeness.

The main point in relation to your original query is that the marriage certificates are not photocopies of the original entry but of a transcription of it.  So errors are very likely.

However, I wonder why you thought you were seeing original signatures?  Aren't all the entries on a given marriage certificate in the same hand?

Yes, it is easy to see where errors could be made!  And they were!  So I wouldn't worry at all about Benjamin appearing to be his own father!

Lots of luck,

JAP

[Valda]

If they are old church marriages supplied by the GRO then they are copies made of the original church registers by the minister or parish clerk. Does all the handwritten on each certificate look to be by the same hand? The only part on the original church certificate which would not be by the minister or parish clerk's hand was the signatures or the cross if the person could not sign his name. The minister or the parish clerk then wrote the name of the person next to the cross. In original parish registers both pre and post 1837 you can see the signatures come from wildly different handwriting some of it like modern day signatures completely illegible.
After many complaints the GRO rarely produces a handwritten copy of a certificate. The danger with a modern handwritten copy is the modern day clerk has little or no familiarity with C19th handwriting. I have older GRO handwritten copies where the clerk has made a error e.g quite understandably transcribing the father's forename as David when it was actually Darvil. Local registrars often make handwritten copies of certificates instead of making photocopies. It is probably easier for them to find the book and make a handwritten copy, than find the book (of whatever size) and make a photocopy of one section of the page with the certificate on it, while breaking the spine of the volume on the photocopier and then lugging the volume back down to the 'vaults'. You can see why some overstretched and probably understaffed registrars in London will no longer produce copies of old BMDs and refer you to the GRO.
If the local registrar has produced a photocopied copy then it depends where the marriage took place. If the marriage took place in a registrar's office or in a non-conformist church then the copy was made at the sametime as the ceremony since the district registrar had to be present to legalise the marriage. I suppose its dependant on whether he made a copy or wrote two (three since the couple took one) certificates and got the couple and witnesses to sign them all? In Anglican ceremonies it was not necessary to have the registrar present to legalise the marriage, hence why the church had to make copies of its marriages to send to the local registrar. Many ministers saw this as an unnecessary burden of paperwork and at least in the initial years could be fairly lax about it. Some of the ministers had only a rather hazy conception of what a quarterly return actually meant. I suppose again at the time of their ceremonies they could have got the couple to sign the copy which went to the local registrar but there is a danger there that some certificates might get lost in the wait before all were sent at the end of the quarter, so probably many made copies from the registers at the end of the quarter and that was the parish clerk's job.
In the end whoever has produced the certificate for you, you should be able tell whether it is a copy, by the uniformity of the handwriting.

Regards
Valda

[Steven1966]

Valda and Jap


In this case BOTH certificates are from the GRO and are Photocopies.The wedding took place at a church, St Saviours, "according to the rites and ceremonies of the established church".The handwriting on the certificate including the signature of the only one of the four people who took part, who could write, appears to be in the same hand (don't know why i never noticed before).

The birth certificate is all in the same hand, but  is a photocopy from from a list which may also be in the same hand. I can just make out the edge of the entries above and below.

Thank you both very much for your comments and help.

Stephen