Why can't I find this marriage record?

Question

Two different online genealogy sites, GEDBAS and Family Tree, list the marriage of Wilhelm Schmehl and Johanna Albers as occurring on April 30, 1878 in Weener, Germany. Yet when I look at the Catholic records for Weener, I cannot find the marriage record. (Both of them were Catholics.) There are only two marriages listed for Weener in 1878.

Would the marriage record appear in some other district? I can't even find Weener on Archion, and those records are gibberish to me anyway.

Comments

Perhaps they were not married in the Catholic Church. Meyers Gazetteer says, some what cryptically, that there is one other church that was not a Catholic Church, an Evangelical Church or a Synogogue.

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This book, published in 2015, may be of help: 

Familienbuch der Ev.-Ref. Kirchengemeinde Weener: Beschotenweg, Holthusen, Holthuserheide, Möhlenwarf, Smarlingen, Tichelwarf, Weener, Weenermoor, 1674-1900

WorldCat shows this in only a few libraries in the US.

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Thanks. I ordered a copy through interlibrary loan.

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The wife was baptized in a Lutheran church. The husband was baptized in a Catholic church.

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As it turns out, the protestant records for Weener are not on Archion, so that was a bust.

Answer 1

The great majority of the inhabitants of Weener have been reformed (calvinistic), belonging to the Ev.-ref. church like in a number of towns in the western part of East Frisia (the part with strong connections with the Netherlands). A Lutheran church has only existed in Weener since the 1950s, the Catholic one since the 1840s.
The GEDBAS and Family Tree data says that the bride was born in Weener 1856. This might indicate that she was baptized in the reformed church of Weener. In this case (if you know that she was definetely baptized in a Lutheran church this would not be true of course) she should be in the Ortsfamilienbuch Weener (for ev.-ref. parish) and there is a good chance that the marriage is listed there as well.

Microfiches of the reformed parish registers (and all East Frisian Ortsfamilienbücher) can be checked at the Fachstelle für Familienkunde in the Landschaftsbibliothek Aurich. Unfortunately the Ev.-ref. church has not cooperated with Archion or any other online portal, so that most of the actual records are not accessable online.
From October 1874 on the civil marriage records would probably include even more and better data. It is possible that the GEDBAS/Family Free data is from the civil marriage record (and even possible that only the civil marriage happened in Weener). For Weener the Civil Register Records are at the State Archive in Aurich. Unfortunately they are as well (as far as I know) not accessable online.

Comments

As Jens wrote, the date would come from the civil marriage record in Weener and (if the have a copulation in the church) would have been in the parish where the bride was born. So, the question is, if the bride is born in Weener or from another village?

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According to FamilySearch, she was born in Weener. https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QPN2-B3H5 and baptized in Evnagelisch-Reformierte Kirche Weener Ems (KrSt. Weener). I made the assumption that it was a Lutheran church, but that's obviously not the case given Jens historiography. According to those records, she was baptized in 1857 but born in 1856.