Collins Tracing Your Family History. Anthony Adolph

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      POLICE RECORDS

      The Shetland Islands Council has the records of the Lerwick Police Commissioners (see here), who invited James, then a member of the Aberdeen Police Establishment, to become their police constable on 6 April 1852. He had asked for 20s a week but accepted their offer of 18s and a suit of clothes yearly, provided he could act as sheriff officer as well. In June they agreed to pay him an extra £2 ‘for the freight of himself and his family and furniture from Aberdeen to Lerwick’.

      On 15 July the next year he was granted leave of absence to take his sick child to Aberdeen. But in March 1854 we find that ‘objections had been made by many people to [Wilson’s] leaving the town on the fiscal business of the county, he stated he would engage not leave town for any greater distance than such as he might be able to return from in the course of the following night’. Reading between the lines, the criminally inclined part of the populace had been rubbing their hands with delight whenever they saw the policeman departing on a boat, and the law-abiding section of the population had had enough of it!

      Wilson appears in the archives giving lengthy statements about various crimes, thefts and breaches of the peace he had to deal with. But then, in December 1854, Wilson, James Angus a joiner and Andrew Nicholson, spirit dealer, were attacked by two sailors from a ship from Boston and Angus and Nicholson were knifed. Wilson had probably saved their lives, but he had had enough. In May 1855 he asked the commissioners for a certificate of good character and leave to ‘go south with the view of looking after some situation’. The commissioners regretfully obliged, commending his work in ‘repressing breaches of the peace’ and off he went, to work in Edinburgh first as a policeman and then as a cooper, leaving it to his wife to write to the commissioners chasing them for his arrears in salary. It seems that anything by then seemed preferable to being policeman in Lerwick.

      MARRIAGES

      The indexes give:

       The names of the parties marrying

       The registration district where the event took place

       A reference number

      The best way of searching is to choose the most unusual of the two surnames and, when you find a possible reference to one party, see if there is a corresponding reference for the other, with an identical registration district and reference number. However, as the reference numbers prior to 1912 relate to pages containing two marriage entries, there may be a few unlucky cases in which John Smith and Mary Brown do indeed appear on the same page but as the groom and bride respectively of two completely different people! In such cases, you will simply have to continue the search once your application for the certificate has been returned.

      From March 1912, the name of the other spouse appears next to the index entries, avoiding this problem and making searches much more straightforward.

      Marriage certificate of Patric Henry Kilduff and Mary Ann Collingwood Paterson, 1879.

      Marriage certificates record the following:

       Date and place of the marriage. Marriages often took place at Christmas, because this was one of the very few times of the year – if not the only time – when poor families had enough time off work to come together. The parish was usually the home parish of the bride.

       Names of bride and groom. If the bride was a widow, she will be recorded (and therefore indexed) under her last married name, not her maiden name. If you are unaware that an ancestor had been married before, you may run into problems, although the maiden name should have been stated in the birth certificate of any children of the marriage.

       Marital condition: bachelor or spinster, widower or widow. If divorced, the name of the previous spouse may be recorded.

       Ages. Ages on marriage certificates are notoriously vague or inaccurate. In many cases the bride and groom will simply state either ‘full age’ or ‘minor’. ‘Minor’ means under 21. Until 1929, provided they had parental consent, boys could marry at 14 and girls at 12, and after 1929 the minimum age was 16. Marriages between such young persons were rare, but they did happen and many marriage searches fail simply because people do not search back before their ancestors would have been 18. ‘Full age’ means 21 or over, or under 21 but lying to avoid the need for parental consent. If ages are given, they may be inaccurate: boys who upped their age to join the army might say they were older than they really were, while the opposite was often true for older women wanting to marry nice young soldiers. If you suspect an ancestor was not being entirely truthful, it is worth checking a later census to see if they gave more accurate information later in life.

       Occupations. Until the mid-20th century, even if she worked 18-hour days at a coal mine or scrubbing other peoples’ doorsteps, the bride’s occupation was very seldom deemed worthy of recording.

       Place of residence. These are often misleading. Generally, the bride’s address is likely to have been her normal address, but grooms often took up temporary residence in the parish, usually for a minimum of four weeks, in order to be allowed to marry in the parish church. Sometimes the bride and groom will give the same address, but this is unlikely to mean they were openly sleeping together. More likely, he was her father’s apprentice or lodger, or his family and hers were renting different sets of rooms in the same building.

       Names and occupations of fathers. Mothers’ names were not recorded. If fathers were retired, they might be rather grandly entitled ‘gentleman’. Dead fathers were very often given a posthumous promotion by their proud children, such as boatswain to captain. It was normal, but sadly not universal, to state whether the fathers were alive or dead at the time of the marriage: generally, assume that the father was alive unless otherwise stated, but do not take this as absolute fact.

       Whether the marriage was by banns or licence. These terms are explained more fully here.

       Signatures or marks of bride, groom and a minimum of two witnesses. As we have seen, marks did not always denote illiteracy. Remember that although signatures of the bride, groom and witnesses will appear on the original certificate, the certificates issued by the GRO are copies in the registrars’ handwriting. You can apply to the relevant superintendent registrar if you want to see the originals. This is especially useful if you wish to identify someone by their signature. Witnesses were often siblings of the bride or groom; but do not make the mistake of thinking that because a favoured sibling did not witness a marriage they cannot have been present.

       Name of clergyman. If the bride or groom were related to a clergyman, he might have come to their local church to perform the ceremony for them.

      An Adolf family wedding in Hove, 1915.

      Marriage records are often missed because people assume their ancestors practised the rule of ‘no sex before marriage’. After many years as a full-time genealogist I have serious doubts as to whether many people have ever heeded that maxim, as a great deal of couples registered the first child’s birth less than nine months after their wedding day. Nor was it unknown for couples to say they were married when they registered their first child, but not walk up the aisle until a year or two later. If you cannot find the marriage before their first child was born, try looking afterwards. Equally, some people forget how large families could be in the past, and give up far too soon. It is not unusual, especially in the 19th century, to find a marriage taking place 15 or