Here's a puzzle. Can anyone help?

[tony vines]

Pam

The entries are all post 1837 GRO records so I obtained them from a well-known genealogy site. The exception was the birth details for Thomas Jenner which came from Family Search and I presume are from BTs or similar.

cheers

[Ken_R]

(Think of how similar the names are, even though they begin with different letters.)

Pam

From Transcribing old records I know only too well how it is sometimes difficult to differentiate between Thomas and James. I did read an explanantion somewhere that with Civil Registrations, from the time when the original Registration was made, to it appearing on the GRO Index, it may have been copied, often by hand, anything up to six times. The full sequence was given but I can't remember the details.

The point is that, if at any point in that process, a name was unclear and could be read in different ways, then multiple entries were made (my understanding) and I have certainly encountered such occurences.

Admittedly, they are more obvious with surnames, where something Halliday/Holliday might appear twice but the situation also extends to forenames. Perhaps this is what has happened here?

[Pam Downes]

Pam

The entries are all post 1837 GRO records so I obtained them from a well-known genealogy site. The exception was the birth details for Thomas Jenner which came from Family Search and I presume are from BTs or similar.

cheers

Before I do any more damage to myself by stop faffing about, go and use FreeBMD, and then tell us the quarters, years, registration districts, names, and references of the marriages you've found.

Ron - I would more than agree with you but until Tony finally clarifies information we're making uneducated guesses. I'm hoping that with the precise details we'll be able to to make educated guesses.

Pam

[Ken_R]

Completely bonkers and will never change.

Who's Ron? The only Ron I know is Da Doo Ron Ron, the Crystals, 1963, Phil Spector and his Wall of Sound. I didn't particularly like it anyway.

I've looked through the FreeBMD lists for the Quarter/Districts stated, as I was looking to see if there were any UCF (Uncertain Character Format) entries. The one's where an entry could be read as a 1 or a 7, or a 6 as an 8 or a 9, etc, and there weren't any (that I saw).

I did however notice that there were some that showed only two names, as opposed to the normal 4 (or 8). Speculating here but, could it be that the Registrar, in perhaps a 'quiet' area, 'closed the page' at the end of each month? We'll never know for certain.

[Pam Downes]

I must have gone cross-eyed when I read your post Ken. (I remember seeing an R and an N.)
My apologies.

Pam

[Ken_R]

Pam. Not a problem. I was just teasing. I get called all sorts of things, and even answer to most.

BTW how does one get one's own By-line on here?

Mods. I want one one that reads,

"Short attention span and can't be a**ed with long paragraphs."

Not that I object to the preamble, which can be vary valuable but, once someone starts getting to the salient points, I would much rather that they nail each one in turn.

I'm not a 'pen & paper' type, so it makes it much easier when going back to check something.

[notanotherminer]

BTW how does one get one's own By-line on here?

Signatures are earned by the quality of a person's posts and their contribution to the Forum. They can only be awarded by an Administrator on the recommendation of the Moderators.

[tony vines]

Before I do any more damage to myself by stop faffing about, go and use FreeBMD, and then tell us the quarters, years, registration districts, names, and references of the marriages you've found.

Ron - I would more than agree with you but until Tony finally clarifies information we're making uneducated guesses. I'm hoping that with the precise details we'll be able to to make educated guesses.

Sorry folks I've not visited the forum for a few days. Pam I am actually convinced by the replies above that James and Thomas can be taken for each other during the process of transcription. I've tried writing the names in cursive handwriting to convince myself and it's actually easily done.

It was my misfortune to find a census transcription by an enumerator who mis-read the first name of the Head of family and the surname of his father-in-law (which if read correctly would have helped me to solve part of the problem). The other two marriages in an adjacent parish of a Thomas to Harriet and James to the same Harriet were clearly another example of the same problem. Before you kind folks educated me on the perils of transcription I didn't know that more than one entry could be made for the same event and I had simply assumed that when the search threw up two men and only one women that it was simply a fault in the matching or search process of the website concerned. It never occurred to me that it was only one marriage with alternative names for the groom.

So I was bedevilled by three mis-transcriptions on the same search. Is that a record?

Thank you all for your help. I am definitely older and possibly even wiser for your advice.

[Ladkyis]

aaaah, but what a wonderful place to have a learning curve eh Tony. This is one reason why I am a member of this forum. I learn stuff every day and I have been here since the day the forum started. So glad your problem has been sorted.

[tony vines]

Agreed wholeheartedly Ladkyis. I see that I was a month later than you joining!

cheers