Can't find a Marriage Record from 1860.

[Dennis]

I have an 1861 birth record of a birth on December 14th 1860 for a James McKenna which lists a date for his parents marriage as April 2nd 1860 in Glasgow. However I cannot find the Marriage Record for the parents on ScotlandsPeople for a Charles McKenna & Hannah Cooney. They are all 3 on the 1861 census in the parish of Springburn.

dennis (who is having woes uploading the docs)

[WilmaM]

Sometimes the date of marriage isn't quite right:
a. the father [ if he registered the birth] couldn't remember the date
esp. if
b. he'd 'wet the baby's head' just beforehand
c. they weren't married at all
d. or married less then 8/9 months before the birth
and they wanted the baby to look respectable.

To be fair many [most?] men can't remember such things as dates of birth and anniversaries
I recall my Dad struggling to fill in a form for us for school one eve when Mum was on night-shift
we'd have been quicker filling it in ourselves and just getting him to sign it!
Present company excepted though we are better at dates in the1800's then the 2000

Have you found any other children Dennis? maybe in the next census to check the marriage date given there.
where were the couple born? maybe they were married in Ireland or elsewhere and the registrar just assumed local as the date given was recent.

[ninatoo]

I had a look and a bit of a search around, varying the spelling of the names using wildcards and even an extended date range to 1880 for the marriage. No likely marriage in the whole of Scotland is there. Maybe they just never married. Sometimes the truth turns up on death registrations, where one or the other is listed as 'single'.

Nina

[paddyscar]

Hi Dennis:

Another consideration is the singular Scottish practice of an 'irregular marriage' viewtopic.php?f=39&t=11070 It is basically a declaration between two people that they are married, and may or may not have been registered.

I looked through the Catholic marriages and the old parish records on ScotlandsPeople, but found nothing there, nor on Family Search https://familysearch.org/search

Family Search did provide the following other children though:

Name: Sarah Mckenna
Gender: Female
Birth Date: 17 Oct 1866
Birthplace: HIGH CHURCH,GLASGOW,LANARK,SCOTLAND
Name: Charles Mckenna
Gender: Male
Birth Date: 15 Jun 1863
Birthplace: HIGH CHURCH,GLASGOW,LANARK,SCOTLAND
Name: Francis Mckenna
Gender: Male
Birth Date: 04 May 1869
Birthplace: HIGH CHURCH,GLASGOW,LANARK,SCOTLAND
Name: William Mckenna
Gender: Male
Birth Date: 02 Dec 1872
Birthplace: HIGH CHURCH,GLASGOW,LANARK,SCOTLAND

Is it possible that they wed in Ireland or England?

Frances

[AndrewP]

Hi Dennis,

I had a good search using assorted wildcards and like the others, I found no likely candidate showing up for their marriage. As said above, if they were married in Scotland, then it looks like it was never registered, so could have been an irregular marriage; or it never happened at all; or was outside of Scotland. The 1871 census shows them both as being born in Ireland, so that is one needle in a haystack you could investigate for a marriage record. However, if they were consistent on each of their children's birth certificates saying the marriage was in Glasgow, then my feeling is you are not going to find a record of it.

All the best,

AndrewP