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  1. #1
    Very quick off the mark.
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    Default 1830 marriage - Gretna Green

    From Ancestry I have downloaded 2 images of a marriage 19 1830 at Gretna Green.

    One image seems to be of a register and shows the names and residence of the couple, date of marriage and names of witnesses.

    The second image appears to be of a single piece of paper. It contains the same information but with the addition of the name of the person who carried out the marriage and the signatures of the bride and groom.

    Can anyone suggest what this second piece of paper would be and why the marriage would have been recorded twice? Ancestry does not give any useful information about this.

  2. #2
    Brick wall demolition expert!
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    What are the titles of the documents?

    Or at least what are the names of the couple?

    Without a little bit more information its just not possible to comment.

  3. #3

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    It sounds like what was sometimes called "marriage lines" - a form of certificate issued to the happy couple by the person who married them... BMDs didn't start in Scotland until 1855, but there are records of people producing a form of certificate to prove to their parish Minister that the marriage had taken place.

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by Megan Roberts View Post
    What are the titles of the documents?

    Or at least what are the names of the couple?

    Without a little bit more information its just not possible to comment.
    The couple are Margaret FOSTER & John KELLY. The marriage date was 7th August 1830. The documents are both in the 'Gretna Green, Scotland, Marriage Registers, 1794-1895"

    It did occur to me after I had posted that maybe the individual paper was the document written on the day and the register was compiled later, which is why it didn't have signatures on it.

    Lesley - I had thought it might be something like that. Would the couple have been given 'marriage lines' and another kept where the marriage took place?

  5. #5

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    In the Northumberland & Durham FHS's publication about irregular marriages at Lamberton Toll, Arthur Brack points out that a drawback to such marriages was that they were difficult to prove afterwards, and it became customary to issue a document stating that the couple had been married by the celebrant, signed by the witnesses. He gives an example which has Country; Place & date; names of the couple and celebrant, names of witnesses. However, this document was obviously intended to be taken away.
    Maybe the copy you found was intended to be taken away, but the couple left it behind.

    Brack also points out that by running marriage mills, the "celebrants" were laying themselves open to arrest, and many of them kept no registers, or only kept tatty notebooks. At that time in Scotland, you didn't need a celebrant, Minister or anything other than and exchange of vows in the presences of respectable witnesses. The marriage mills were there to make money.

    If anyone's interested in the irregular marriages, I have a book called "Hume's decisions" which is the collected cases of a Circuit Judge, bound together by his friends when he retired. It sounds terribly dry until you realise that half the time he was trying to sort out whether people were married or not (sharing the same bedroom at a respectable inn was enough). Rod Neep borrowed my copy to scan, so I assume that it's still available from Archive CD Books.

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