Mismatched geography between parish marriage record and civil registration?

Question

One of the wonderful research rabbit holes that limited my progress during the Connect-a-Thon happened when I looked for an English marriage record for Thomas Bonner and Elizabeth Davey, who married in 1863 and later emigrated to the United States.

On FindMyPast I found a transcript for a parish record of their April 1863 marriage in Kennington, Surrey, and also a record of what appears to be the civil registration of the marriage in 2nd quarter 1863 in Lambeth District, County of London. Surrey is not far from London, but why would the civil registration of a marriage in Surrey be in the County of London? Or are these different geographies possibly an indication that (for example) the wife was from Surrey and the couple married there, but lived in greater London?

Answer 1

Kennington still is largely in Lambeth so those records do not appear to be in conflict. Registration had to occur in the Registration district where the event took place, so a Kennington wedding registered in Lambeth seems in order.

Comments

Perusing modern maps, I see that Kennington is now most definitely a suburb (not at all far from central London), so I guess that these two records must be truly from the same place.

---

Thanks for the background info, C.  

I was curious about the geography because I hoped it would give me a clue about where in England to look for their other records, but as it happens I found registrations in Devon for the nine of their children born in England (five children whose names and birth dates -- or a least years -- I had, plus four others).

Answer 2

There is a great site, UKBMD, that gives the details of all of the registration districts. This is the page for the Lambeth district: https://www.ukbmd.org.uk/reg/districts/lambeth.html

As you can see it says that the district was part of Surrey until 1889.

It lists the sub-districts and they include Kennington.

There is also a free site that lists UK BMD records. Here is the marriage for Thomas Bonner: https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?r=35535250:7198&d=bmd_1669206295

BTW, The WikiTree Sourcer extension will search FreeBMD and create citations from it.

Comments

Thanks for the advice.

I appreciate that FreeBMD is free (and thus is a good source to cite), but I can't see how (or where) to see the name of a spouse in the FreeBMD marriage registration records you cite. That's information I could find in the parish records on FindMyPast (and since I had no idea where in England these people might have lived, it was important to see both names).

---

I agree. FMP has the cool marriage finder feature that figures out the matching halves of the marriage, Ancestry also. Though they often can only say the person married "one of these people".

---

Thanks. Glad to know that my impression of FreeBMD is not just my ineptitude.   For this marriage, the most useful record on FindMyPast was the parish record that gave a precise date, the names of both parties, and the names of their fathers.

---

Ancestry has the images of London marriages as well.

Here is a full size sharing image (viewable by anyone) of that marriage: https://mediasvc.ancestry.com/v2/image/namespaces/1623/media/1558_73022001014_0194-00024.png?securityToken=xw5e7a4a2cd6b2a315a7a8851cf0d3ad40e9313f7a99db0000

The spouses last name does indeed appear to be written Dovey

---

That's great! Thanks! I don't have UK access on Ancestry, and my current access to UK content on FindMyPast does not seem to include all record images. It's interesting that this man was a musician at the time of his marriage; in the United States he worked in paper mills (if I remember right). I'll stick with Davey for the spouse's name for now -- that's the spelling that appears on all of her children's birth registrations, as well as on her gravestone. However, if she comes up as Dovey on earlier records, the LNAB can be changed.

This has been a bit of a diversion from my usual focus (as a Project Leader) on problematic pre-1750 people. Thomas Bonner was the maternal grandfather of the wife of my first cousin twice removed (he's not a relation that most of us would normally pay much attention to); I was rather proud of myself even to find his name, much less the rest of the family.

---

FreeBMD is just as helpful as FindMyPast or Ancestry when it comes to marriage registrations. All three come from the same source, and simply list the names of everyone on the same page. FindMyPast and Ancestry just use wording something like "Possible spouses" or "Married one of ". If, on FreeBMD, you click on the Page number, it will take you to the page with the same list of people on that page that you would get from the two paid sites.
To work out which might be the spouse, you either find the marriage record image, or else look at possible combinations and check for census records and / or children of the marriage with that mother's maiden name.

---

You can also try the Online Parish Clerks website/websites, described here https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/OPC

Not all Online Parish Clerks projects are listed on the Genuki page but can easily be found with a Google search.

For counties and parishes where these groups exist they are a great source of information. Records have been transcribed at a local level, mostly by volunteers, long before online genealogy.

They often include details that are not available on big pay sites as it is included in their transcriptions.

Such as X was the fifth child of A and B,  or child of Bob the miner, or Bob the farmer etc, which can help with making sure you have the correct family,

The Lancashire Parish clerks site is wonderful for details.

Another option for finding obscure references is Dusty Docs, they have searches that can provide links to many databases, including FS, gravestone inscriptions, censuses, maps and other. Not all the FS connections work as they did due to FS recent changes. It is old and a bit odd but can work very well.

  For Surrey- http://www.dustydocs.com/county/36/surrey.html?country_id=1

Answer 3

Ellen, the place of registration is not necessarily the same place where the marriage or other event happened.

A person married in place A. The nearest registration office is 10 miles away in place B.

It would be like getting married in X church in a small town outside NYC, but the office where the papers are sent is the nearest bigger place, the office issues the marriage records it isn't the place/church where the marriage actually happened.

My place of birth is Horsham St Faith in Norfolk, England, my birth was registered in the office in Norwich, Norfolk.

Comments

Registration districts may even be in a different county. My ancestors lived in Northamptonshire but were registered in Rugby, Warwickshire. The same registration district also includes a couple of Leicestershire parishes.

When civil registration was introduced in 1837 the districts were for the most part based on the poor law unions set up in 1834 when the poor laws were revised . These were groups of parishes who contributed to a centrally placed workhouse. It was a convenient division but the association with unpopular poor laws deterred some from registering births.

Answer 4

Kennington is an area of South London, about a mile away from the Bishop's Palace of Lambeth, best known for the Oval Cricket Ground. If your ancestors married in April, then the church records would have been collected and recorded 4 times a year, thus all the marriages in April, May and June, the second quarter of 1863 are recorded in the area of London they occurred. For your ancestors it was the administration country of Lambeth. The records match. There may also be a Bishop's copy of these records at Southwell cathedral archive's.

Comments

David, did you mean Southwark Cathedral ?

Southwell Minster is in Nottinghamshire?