Continued
Other solutions
a) Sometimes the records are not yet transcribed. If you have the time and the knowledge and can help, then please volunteer to transcribe some of those records. The older style of handwriting has not been taught in NSW since the mid 1960’s, soon there will be very few who can read it and have the time and energy to transcribe it.
b) Sometimes the parish has been closed and the registers removed to the safe keeping of the Head Office for that denomination. So, then if you cannot find a local family history group, or if you have no knowledge of any transcriptions of those registers, contact the Archivist’s office of the denomination’s Head Office (usually in Sydney, usually found by looking through the white pages phone books)
Other issues
i) Sometimes the information to cause the NSWBDM to raise an index reference was not ever received or it was lost before being indexed, so sometimes there are marriages in those parish records that are not listed on the NSW BDM indexes. So if you believe there may have been a marriage missed (eg you have a number of NSW BDM birth certificates for children of the couple, and they all cite the date and place in NSW that the couple married), then perhaps the details for that marriage were missed being indexed by NSW BDM .... So use the same solution to approach the local parish records but please do let them know you are unsure IF there was a marriage.
Briefly;
By 1912, some sixty years of civil marriages were still not fully processed by the NSW Reg Gen’s office. This was not a significant issue to those families at that time. They could always go to the court house in the town where they had married and obtain confirmation of the registration of the marriage, but mostly, if a couple and their children were new to a district, it was presumed they were a married couple. And, everyone knew that there were issues for the NSW BDM Reg General’s office v the various denominations not providing the civil authorities with the information from the parish records for the sacred ceremony of a church marriage. .
So, in the regional and rural areas, the numbers of births, deaths and marriages were obviously a great deal less in numbers than in say the then City of Sydney’s boundaries... (Of course, even in 1900, Sydney had a huge percentage of the overall population of NSW). Thus the duties associated with Deputy Registrar Generals were often not full time positions. They were often the function of the local sheriff/bailiff or other court attendants. Births, Deaths and Marriages were recorded in the court houses of so many of the rural towns. At the end of each quarter (so during April, July, October and January) a return was meant to be prepared and forwarded to the Reg Gen’s Office. If there was nothing to report, then no return was made. Sometimes, the quarterly returns were submitted annually, sometimes longer gaps appeared. These returns were sent by ordinary mail. Thus it is quite possible that returns were not processed at the Reg Gen’s Sydney office. (not prepared/not received/lost within HO). But the local court house of course had the authority to issue certified extracts of their records.
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