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legal documents for marriage

Replies: 1

legal documents for marriage

Posted: 2 Mar 2015 8:46AM GMT
Classification: Query
Hi all,

the information on BMD certificates in the UK is rather scarce, which makes it difficult to research a family tree with certainty.
To give you an example, a Belgian marriage certificate would give you names, birth date and place, occupation, residence, full (maiden) names of the parents and their date and place of death (if deceased), names of previous spouses and the date of their death or the divorce. All this information needed to be proven, so each marriage certificate has a bunch of "addenda": copies of the birth certificates of both spouses, death certificates for the parents if they were deceased, a certificate saying that the groom has fulfilled his military service (or not) and - when applicable - the couples inscription in the poor's register.

Does this exist in the UK as well? Or didn't they need to prove anything?

To be more specific: one of my forefathers has some information on his marriage certificate in 1852. I can't find anything on him before that date, though. Some of my contacts said that maybe he lied about his birth year and place, the name of his father or even his own name. Is there any way to check the information he gave? Did they indeed keep these extra records, or did they just believe anything someone said?
In Belgium, as said above, you needed (and still need) a copy of your birth certificate to get married, so there is no way of lying about that. That's why I'm a bit reluctant to believe that the information on his marriage certificate can be completely wrong.

Second question is: from the late 1830's onwards, the "official" BMD registration was installed. But did the parish priests keep their own set of registers as well? And if they did, why aren't they online? Would I need to go to the parish church and hope that they kept the books, or to the national archives?

Regards,
Tom
SubjectAuthorDate Posted
fluffy82 2 Mar 2015 3:46PM GMT 
mi2early 2 Mar 2015 5:20PM GMT 
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