Marriage Certificates

Along with birth and death certificates, marriage certificates are the real meat and potatoes of a genealogist's research. One of the great joys of them is that they're generally less susceptible to omissions and mistakes than the others, since they establish the legitimate rights of future children and widows, and so were often prepared more carefully. It doesn't hurt, too, that there are generally fewer of them to search through than with births and deaths!

History of Marriage Certificates

Much like birth certificates, valid marriages of all forms in England and Wales have only been recorded by the Registrar General since July 1st, 1837. That was also the date when civil ceremonies became legal. In church ceremonies, an "authorised person" (usually the vicar) records the marriage and sends quarterly details to the Registrar General. He then indexes them in both bride and groom's names. However, on a local level, the superintendent registrar normally indexes by church. So if you're looking locally, unless you know in which church the marriage took place, you're like to have a lot of dusty work ahead of you - looking in the national index is much faster and more efficient.

If you know the names of both parties, it's rare that you'll be faced with more than one possible marriage. The common technique is to begin with the rarer of the two surnames. Each time the full name occurs, look for the name of the spouse in the same index to see if the reference numbers are the same. If they do, then it's almost certain that's the certificate you require (from 1912 on, both names are given against both bride and groom, so you don't have to cross-check). From there you can order the certificate.

Prior to 1907, when it was allowed, the most common type of invalid marriage was a man wanting to marry his dead wife's sister. It wasn't until 1837 that Gentiles and Jews were permitted to intermarry.

What The Marriage Certificate Tells You

The marriage certificate probably offers the best boost to research of any document. Not only does it tell you the exact date of the marriage and the full names of the couple, it also includes their ages (however, it might just say "full," meaning of age; around 75% of marriages certificates just list "full" until the early 1850s. If it says "minor" or "under age" that means between the ages of 12 and 20 for a girl and 14-20 for a boy, at least until 1929, when the lower age limit for marriage became 16).

Condition refers to their status - bachelor, widow, spinster, etc. From 1858-1952 a divorced groom would be listed as "the divorced husband of..." with the former wife's maiden name given. A divorced wife would have much the same listing.

The certificate also gives their addresses at the time of marriage, their fathers' forenames and surnames (or "deceased" where applicable), as well as their fathers' professions. Underneath there's information on where the marriage took place, the names of the witnesses and who officiated.

Where you have the precise ages of the bride and groom, it now becomes much easier to go back and find their birth certificates. If there's an indication of a previous marriage, you have an entirely new trail to explore!

Problems With Marriage Certificates

If you know a marriage took place but you can't find the certificate (which does happen on occasion), there could be a number of reasons.

The marriage might have been common law, in which case the couple lived together without the benefit of a ceremony. Many common law wives described themselves as widows when registering their partner's death, making it hard for the real widow to draw a pension - they might even have changed their surname to his (in 1877 the penalty for this falsification was a month in jail of a £5 fine).

It's possible that the names weren't spelt correctly. When illiteracy was more common neither the bride nor groom might have been able to check the spelling of their names, and if the spelling is wrong, the index will be wrong.

If the marriage took place in Scotland, the Isle of Man or the Channel Isles, you would need to consult their registration systems. If the person married abroad, there might be no notification of it (the Public Records Office does, however, have indexes of marriage from about 50 different countries).

You might not have the proper forename. The Wilfred Hinchcliffe you're searching for might really be John Wilfred Hinchcliffe.

If you're searching by the bride's name, don't assume it will be her maiden name. The further back you go, the greater the proportion of marriages involving widows - fully 10% of the total in 1850.