Scouse wrote:Hi Jean.
This was my first post to anywhere in Scotland, And I did not have any of the info you have sent me, does the same criteria as in England apply in Scotland regards to obtaining Certs, I ask this with the marriage of Thomas Young & Elizabeth Jardine Scott in mind, and do they have the same info ie parents & addresses ecetera, thank you for the excellent work
Kind Regards Scouse
Hi Scouse
We love those smiles
Now for some pointers regarding the Scotland records. Being accustomed to English ones you'll be surprised and probably disappointed all in the same span of the next few sentences. Scotland didn't begin statutory registration of births, deaths, and marriages until the year 1855. Anything found after 1st January of that year is a wealth of information.....parent names....occupations....(all the good stuff!).....but prior to this time the records that survive today are called Old Parochial Registers (OPR's). These were maintained by the Church of Scotland and consist of a wide range of data recorded by parish. Some Parishes kept dreadful records...some kept no records at all....and some are a delightful read!! Some only contain a name or names and a date. Some are merely records of payment for calling the banns while others might record a fathers name and occupation for each marrying couple. It's truly a luck of draw according to where your family origniated and when. The good news about the OPR records though is that they are fully digitized and images can be viewed and printed out from online access through
www.ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk This is a pay per view setup which will cost you much less to view records than to purchase an official extract. England still requires all certificates to be purchased sight unseen which I find quite a disappointment....especially when you've made a wrong choice !
Now....in your situation.....the records I found are from the British Isles Vital Records Index source produced by the LDS church. Not all entries in this dataset (which is not available to access online but can be purchased through the LDS website) are found in the IGI database (which
is online at
www.familysearch.com ) and vice versa.
Mostly they are.... but not always. Of course all records that are sourced by the LDS church are available to rent on microfilm at your local Family History Library and view for a very reasonable fee. So you can see you have some options as to how you go about viewing the records.
So now I'll give you some pointers....
On
www.ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk there is an OPR marriage indexed like so:
15/04/1831 MAYES THOMAS JEAN MCCAIG/FR2125 M Dumfries /DUMFRIES 821/ 0090 0039
but sadly it won't tell you parent names or even an occupation for the marrying THomas. So you won't get any more from the original image (other than the satisfaction of viewing it for yourself!) than you've got right here in the indexing of it.
Because there is a birth found that is to this very same couple in Dumfries and it matches name wise and date wise to the family you are searching then it's a very good liklihood these are your people. The best news though that I already mentioned in the earlier post....I found this birth in the OPR records on ScotlandsPeople website and it's a good entry in that it tells the occupation of the father Thomas! So by that adding a very important convincing factor. To view this birth you can find it indexed like this:
18/02/1832 MAYES JAMES THOMAS MAYES/JANE MCCAIG FR1966 M Dumfries /DUMFRIES 821/ 0080 0094
Same holds true for the marriage you've originally questioned...
30/12/1830 YOUNG THOMAS ELIZABETH JARDINE/SCOTT FR2124 M Dumfries /DUMFRIES 821/ 0090 0038
It's recorded in the same format as the other couple with no parents, witnesses, or identifying information.
It's interesting to scan the lists of marrying couples though. It's possible to pick up other folks marrying around the same time with the same surname and from the same parish. Sometimes this can assist with the connecting of siblings.
It might also be good to gather any families with the same surnames still in Dumfries parish for the 1841 census and then see if any might make logical siblings. Then trace them forward and if they die in Scotland after 1855 and the informant knows the info....you'll get their parent names and occupation!!!!
Sorry this has turned into such an epic reply....sometimes I just get carried away
Best wishes
Jean
So far in all the OPR's I have obtained it is nothing more than the calling of the Banns.