Gretna Green Marriage records

[Nick Carver]

My gggrandfather whilst resident in Scotland had 9 children. My uncle has all 9 birth certificates. On each of them, the date of marriage is different. We are beginning to suspect that he was never married to my gggrandmother. Both of them were born in London and they produced children in the Stranraer area of Scotland. Of course, they may have married at Gretna Green on their way to Scotland, which might account for the difficulty in tracing the marriage. Does anyone have any tips for tracing Gretna (and similar) marriages? Would they be recorded centrally in Scotland? The marriage would have been around 1850.

[Rinnie]

Hi Nick

 I've got this website for searching Gretna marriages:

http://www.achievements.co.uk/services/gretna/index.php

I couldn't find my ancestors that got married there, but luckly for me they got married again in their home town! It is difficult to trace Gretna marriages as far as I know they didn't all get a certificate to say they had been married! so there would be no record of the marriage taking place.

Hope the websites ok!

good luck

Rin 

[Boongie Pam]

Hi Nick,

I posted a mail about "runaways" on the Dumfriesshire forum here's the link..

http://www.rootschat.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=8015.0

There are many places along the border where declarations were made and there is not always access to the records.

I have a few irregular marriages in my tree in Scotland and can find no trace of them anywhere!

I've also found a few porkypies!  One couple said they were married for 3 years and two children when they actually got married the census near the time underestimated their oldest 2 children's ages so it looked that they were born legitimately.

Now, you say the marriage would have been ~1850, this predates statutory registration.  So they may have just declared that they were married.  This may not have been made official in church so may not appear in any records.  Or the parish records may have been lost.

It may be worth checking the Kirk Sessions for the area as people where often fined for marrying irregularyly an example of this in my tree is...

Dumfries Kirk of Sessions 26/02/1808:
Irregular marriage last whitsunside; paid £1 fine to poor. Ref: CH2/537/10 p293

It's a toughy!

Pam