Looking for the marriage of Hector Ferdinand VISTARINI and Mary. It is Mary who is the mystery.
......
Mary WILLIAMS born at Mudgee, married on 1 July 1884 at St George, Qld
Mary was the informant..... Mary made her mark.
Hector’s details are consistent across the records except that at his death he was called Hector ROBINSON. The newspaper reports and death record are both in the name of Hector Robinson. It seems that he had been working and living under the Robinson name. Why? We don’t know. Mary’s surname changes at every reference – so if someone was hiding I suspect it was Mary. (The children’s birth records are all in the VISTARINI name.)
Hi there,
Fingers crossed Steve, that I have not taken some info out of context
Mary VISTARINI says she was married 1 July 1884 at St George, Queensland, and that she was previously Mary WILLIAMS. Surely, this information is the verbal info provided by Mary to the clerk recording the birth of Hector in 1887. May I suggest that info would be first hand info. I cannot see why there ought to be any suggestion that anyone was hiding behind any name, as so far, that seems to be the only time Mary provides info about herself.
I think you will find that the mid to late 19thC Qld BDM admin system was likely similar to the NSW BDM admin system,. In that era, it was well understood that many adults had not been university educated, and therefore were unable to read “a clerk’s long-hand scribble, upside down and across” a high counter. In fact, many were not literate. So, the birth registration process in rural NSW was undertaken at the admin section of a Court House, where perhaps the Sheriff or the CPS, or their clerk were assigned the part time duties associated with being a Deputy Registrar (BDM, Land Titles Office etc) ….
I am not familiar with marriage registration issues in that era in Queensland, but I am definitely familiar with the issues in NSW in that era..... There are many missing from the NSW BDM online index. Sometimes there can be clues found that help you find the likely location of the parish register that has recorded the marriage.
The NSW issues were basically administrative ones..... clerks failing to lodge quarterly summaries, or clerks unable to read the scribble on the summaries received, or clerks failing to record the summaries received, but there's also the passage of time ..... So in the 1980s NSW BDM undertook their initial computerisation, and the EDP system and damaged cards etc caused a loss of indexed entries.
So, have you sought advice from Qld BDM's Registrar as to searching their registry for a possible marriage between a Hector and a Mary .... with Hector's surname and its known spelling variations, it may be an option to advance your search for Mary's parents details. (Add, you can make a request of NSW BDM for such a search .... of course there's a fee required for that )
Alternatively, do you know Mary's denomination ? And have you searched the
Church registers for the St George region of Qld? I am sure the clergy's register will have recorded the details for the parents of the bride as well as the parents of the groom, and the details of where and when the bride and groom were born
and their usual addresses at the time of their marriage, and the adult giving consent if either not yet 21 when marrying...
Cheers, JM
