Help Needed To Understand 'Marriage Locator' Website

[stanmapstone]

If you can get hold of a copy, Michael Whitfield Foster's Comedy of Errors, it will prove most enlightening as to how the indexes were historically compiled and the errors and omissions caused as a result of late submissions by the Anglican clergy and the problems of reading their handwriting added to a very manual and labour-intensive system of indexing in pre-computer days.

See http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/mikefost/

Stan

[River Tyne Lass]

Thanks Slow Gin for posting the links which look really interesting and also thanks  dawnsh for all the information which is very helpful for my understanding concerning this topic.

Even though the website is still very much a work in progress I am very pleased with the success I have had with it so far in being able to pin point several Church marriages which I am after in the Newcastle registration district.  I also found one which only pinpoints a register office which at least has saved me some time in looking for it on microfilm.

This is a strange one though .. don't quite know what to make of it.  This relates to an ancestor called Mary Ann Conroy who married a Thomas Nichol in 1897 September quarter 10b page 601 Morpeth.  The website gives a message saying that this entry is between entries for Bellingham and Alnwick but these are separate registration districts in themselves.  I would have thought this record would have appeared between Sub-district areas of Morpeth.

This side of my family was Roman Catholic but for some reason sometimes also dabbled with C of E Churches.  When Mary Ann was widowed she married again to a Cuthbert Saint.  I do know that this second marriage was at a registry office.

It is fascinating to know how these indexes can be worked out even though it does seem a bit of a complicated process.

I do wonder how Brummygirl got on too.  Good on her for doing all that work which will no doubt be of benefit now and in the future to countless people.

[River Tyne Lass]

Thanks for posting this link Stan.  I will read this later today - just on way home from work so will looking forward to reading this later on.

[dawnsh]

This is a strange one though .. don't quite know what to make of it.  This relates to an ancestor called Mary Ann Conroy who married a Thomas Nichol in 1897 September quarter 10b page 601 Morpeth.  The website gives a message saying that this entry is between entries for Bellingham and Alnwick but these are separate registration districts in themselves.  I would have thought this record would have appeared between Sub-district areas of Morpeth.

This side of my family was Roman Catholic but for some reason sometimes also dabbled with C of E Churches.  When Mary Ann was widowed she married again to a Cuthbert Saint.  I do know that this second marriage was at a registry office.

freebmd also has a lot of information behind the scenes

You can look at their page ranges for the year and quarter

https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/district-page-map.pl?file=1897M1.csv%201897M2.csv%201897M3.csv%201897M4.csv

Sep    10b    547-605    Morpeth    
Sep    10b    607-634    Alnwick    

The entry you are looking for is 601 which is at the top end of the Morpeth range suggesting it was most probably a register office marriage (or RC registrar attended) which is why the marriage locator gives you the error message, they just don't have specific data to give you an exact place.

[River Tyne Lass]

Thank you for this dawnsh.  This is something new to me.  How would I get to such behind the scenes information from the home page on freebmd?

[River Tyne Lass]

No it is alright, I have found out to do this myself.  You learn something new on here every day.  Thanks again dawnsh.

[majm]

This is an excellent thread

JM

[River Tyne Lass]

Have you been having some success with this website too majm?   

[Gadget]

I tink JM was locating the thread to help me on another thread 

Add - this one:

https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=805671.0