Genealogy Chat

Following on from some comments in another thread, here's a poser for people to give their opinions on.... How important to mr & mrs average would the borders between counties and parishes have been? What makes people decide to confuse those future generations of us who are researching them by getting married / dying in a different place? lol! I have ancestors from the village of Offley in Hertfordshire who decided to get married in Luton, over the border in Bedfordshire. I have ancestors from Handforth in Cheshire who married in Cheadle (Cheshire) or Manchester (Lancashire) - neither in the same parish. Wouldn't the beaurocracy of the day try and ensure that things were registered in the same area, or wouldn't it have mattered? What do we all think?

Not quite sure what you mean about being registered in the same area? Things have always been registered in the area where they happened. They may have been living out of their 'normal' area when they married, for instance. you only have to be resident in an area for three weeks to marry there - less,or not at all, if you marry by licence. We only have ten year markers in the form of census - they could have been anywhere doing anything, in the intervening nine years, eleven months and thirty days, lol. Births happen where they happen - on a visit to relatives, on an outing, etc, and many new brides went home to mum for the birth of their first child. And you die where you die - on a trip to the market, on a trip to relatives in the next county, or wherever you happen to be. Incidentally, if your Cheadle relatives married in Manchester Cathedral, that may have been because MC was a 'peculiar' and asked no questions of marrying couples, neither did it require Banns to be called. OC

You die where you die of course, yeah a little bit of my post was a little bit tongue-in-cheek - but I suppose, using the Offley example, what I was getting at is if you lived in Hertfordshire, why would you get married in Bedfordshire, or wouldn't it even have been relevant to you?

Borders? What really p**s me of is the way County borders have been change to suit political parties!!! Do I look in Dorset or Hampshire for Bournemouth?? Where is Rutland now?? Barrow in Furness - Cumbria or Lancashire??? maggie

A lot depends on WHEN. Pre 1820, movement between parishes was difficult, if not impossible, although lots seemed to manage it somehow. Later in the 1800s, people were able to move freely around the country. But even so, for most ordinary people, you would marry in the parish where one or other of you lived, and there would have been a significance for someone who lived in Bedfordshire to marry in Hertfordshire - one or other of them lived there, or maybe their parents did. I have only found one geographically inexplicable marriage and that was of two people who were born bred and died in Manchester. They married on the Isle of Man in 1855 and I do not have a clue WHY. If you are talking more recently, well, people now see marriage as much more of an event and want to marry in a pretty church. I don't think that applied back then! OC

OK peeps, yes I understand the randomness of life and how people and their families move to completely new areas and marry .... but back to my Offley example, the couple concerned were living in Offley at census before the marriage, and at the census after. And Offley has its own parish church! What could have made them go to another church in a different county to marry?

Try living in a town where the borders were changed lol. I live in cumbria but back in the day it was lancashire... it can be a pain in the butt when searching. Mum blames the conservatives, they created the county for political gain back in the 70s apparently. The same thing happens with London ancestors. An area that was classed as one district for bmd at one time was different later and on the census can be different again. Nightmare. Nicola, perhaps they really liked the church, perhaps they had other ties there. Family living there or one of them was baptised there. Maybe their usual church was out of commission. My brother's both got married in different towns to where they were living at the time.

Oh hey... Maggie... you mentioned my home town... first time I've seen anyone mention Barrow F on here. Yeah... a real pain it is.

OC we're talking mid to late 1800s. I supoose as railways spread around the country it became easier to move around - to understand people's movements better you need to understand where railways were - that's a whole different thread - but again my example - no railway station in Offley!

Sometimes a look at parish records will tell you that for example the parish church was having a new roof at a certain time so all marriages would be at ....(named) church. I have ancestors who lived in Gloucestershire but had their children baptised in Herefordshire. When we visited the area, I could see why. The church was a short walk from home, -down the hill into the valley..... but just happened to be across the county boundary. Gwyn

Lots of things here: You have the wrong marriage certificate. you have the right marriage certificate, because they moved to Herts for a bit for work and married there, then moved back to their home town before the next census. They nipped off to Herts to marry because everyone thought they were already married in their home town...does that fit the births of the children??? OC

Changing counties cause enough hassle nowadays, never mind way back when! Rutland is back! Re-created out of Leicestershire a few years ago I believe! Berkshire has now ceased to officially exist - replaced by Slough, Windsor & Maidenhead, Bracknell, and West Berkshire I think! Avon, which itself was created out of bits of Gloucestershire and Somerset, has gone again! Cleveland, which was born from bits of Northumberland and of Yorkshire, has gone. Humberside has gone back to being East Riding of Yorkshire.... the list goes on......

Thanks OC, given us a few things to investigate..... we dont have a marriage cert, info comes from IGI site, but parents & children match so seems to be correct. Yes i guess its perfectly possible that they could have moved there and moved back between censuses (censi?? lol what is the plural of census?!) you really do have to have a lateral thinking mind for this geneaology game dont you!!!

Perhaps I can help out on Handforth and Cheadle....they are only 3 or 4 miles apart as the crow flies. Cheadle village was my home village and St Mary's Church seemed a very popular church for marriages from the surrounding areas in the 1800s. Several of my Stockport family married there. I was born in Stockport, Cheshire and for a while after starting my family tree I could'nt get my head around the fact that in the 1800s and early 1900s the Heaton Norris area came under Lancashire. As we lived in Heaton Norris in the early 1950s just before we moved to Cheadle and we knew it then as Stockport, Cheshire. By the way Nicola have you checked your Hankinson's thread lol. Linda

Nicola Unless the IGI record is an extracted one, I would be VERY wary of the information! Have you found a corresponding marriage in the GRO index? OC

My great grandmother surprised me. She was down as born in Falmouth in Cornwall in census records but I couldn't find her baptism or why she was there when all the rest of the family were from Somerset. Eventually I discovered her father was a travelling sawyer at the time and she was eventually baptised at the same time as other siblings when they all went home to their village in Somerset and great grandmother was 4. There's a reason for all of it but we can't always work out why easily. Sue

Nicola, Perhaps you should break it gently to the Lord Lieutenant of Berkshire that you think the county no longer exists? I have reached that stage in life where Berkshire will always exist, and that includes all that chunk annexed by Oxfordshire! Denis

I have a few cases of couples getting married out of their own area. After several years of research I found that the reason for one of them was family tradition as the brides GG Grandmother was baptised and married there. In another it seems that due to the bride being from a better background than the groom they left the area to marry because her parents were against it. Berkshire borders have moved around quite a bit over the years but Berkshire is still there! Did you mean Middlesex?

Sorry, Berkshire fans! Berkshire ceased to exist in a local government sense in 1998 when the unitary authorities of West Berkshire, Slough, Reading, Bracknell Forest, Wokingham and Windsor & Maidenhead were created.

Sorry Nicola I just havent been back in a few years. The Bucks/Berks boarders drive me mad at the best of times! Just like Brighton & Hove no longer being in Sussex because it has city status I guess....they just aim to confuse