A civil registration scheme for Marriages was introduced into England and Wales on 1 July 1837. Prior to this time (1754-1837) marriages were only recognised if they took place in the Church of England or in accordance with Quaker and Jewish rites. The registration scheme allowed marriages to also be recognised as valid if performed in the presence of a registrar either in a civil registry office or in buildings used for Roman Catholic or non-conformist worship. A further modification in 1898 allowed other specific authorised persons to be present instead of the registrar.
Two registers were completed during the marriage ceremony, one of which was retained by the church, the other being sent to the superintendent registrar when it was full. In addition, the minister prepared a further copy of the marriages every three months which was sent directly to the Registrar General.
Marriage Certificate William BRIMER and Margaret WARDLAW 1881 (Family E). Crown Copyright.
The marriage record will typically show the following:
- Full name of bride – including maiden name and previous married names
- Full name of groom
- Age of bride and groom – this may be given as full or minor meaning over 21 or under 21 respectively. This was the age at which marriage was allowed without parental consent, a restriction that was in place until 1970.
- Date of marriage
- Place of marriage – a place of worship, civil ceremony location or register office.
- Rank or Profession of bride and groom
- Whether after Banns or License
- Residence at the time of marriage
- Marital status
- Father’s full name and occupation for both the bride and groom
- Marriage witnesses – every marriage must be independently witnessed by two people. Both witnesses will be recorded by name on the certificate and each will sign the marriage register.
- Date the marriage was registered
It should be noted that ages on marriage certificates are not always accurate. This may have arisen because people were less aware of their exact ages; because the couple wished to minimise the age gap; one of the parties did not wish their partner to know their true age or because one or both were under the age of 21. Fathers’ occupations are also suspect as they were sometimes changed to make families appear higher up the social ladder. Lastly because having banns read required the couple to use the names by which they were known at that time, they may sometimes differ from their birth names.
It is only possible to view the indexes for marriage registrations online at the moment. These are available at free sites such as http://www.freebmd.org.uk/ and subscription sites such as http://www.findmypast.co.uk and http://ancestry.co.uk. From 1911 onwards the surname of the spouse is given in the indexes. Each certificate ordered currently costs £9.25.
The tables below are based on the marriage registration indexes. Brimer and Brymer surnames have been fully researched and put into families and are colour coded accordingly. The data has been collected for the other families, but not synthesised or analysed yet. The tables are presented in their raw form and will be updated in the future.
Brimer-Brymer database last updated at 2016-07-02 00:29:43 with 4028 census records and 2856 individuals