What am I doing wrong?.....

[nelmit]

Extract from the IGI

ARCHIBALD MCMURTRIE
Male
Marriages:
Spouse: ELIZABETH BRANNEY
Marriage: 11 JUL 1864 Stranraer, Wigtown, Scotland

I want the parents' names but same search on SP gives no results.

Regards,
Annette M

[AndrewP]

Hi Annette,

The marriage is there on SP, but his surname has lost the "Mc".

Archibald Murtrie & Elizabeth Branney
Stranraer, Wigtownshire, 1864

When you view the certificate, you can find out if SP or the IGI is correct. If the SP index does not match the image, then a contact form is called for, seeking a revision of the index entry.

All the best,

Andrew Paterson

[nelmit]

Hello Andrew,

Thanks for that, I had tried many permutations but a drop of the Mc did not even occur to me.

Strangely enough his name is shown as Murtrie on the entry but McMurtrie on the IGI. His parents names as shown as McMurtrie.

Kind regards,
Annette

[DavidWW]

Hello Andrew,

Thanks for that, I had tried many permutations but a drop of the Mc did not even occur to me.

Strangely enough his name is shown as Murtrie on the entry but McMurtrie on the IGI. His parents names as shown as McMurtrie.

Kind regards,
Annette

This is a subtlety of the IGI that has to be understood.

In other words, even although Archibald is clearly shown on the marriage register entry as "MURTRIE" the LDS indexers looked at his father and mother's surnames, shown as "McMURTRIE" and used the only latter, - you'd have thought that they might have had entries under both........

It's the only exception that I've ever come across of LDS not indexing the record exactly as it's shown.

In this case, without a look at the original marriage schedule, we'll never know if Archibald actually signed himself as MURTRIE, or McMURTRIE but the registrar got the transcription wrong !!

This example also raises the question of why the GROS indexers didn't have dual entries under both surnames .............

David

[AndrewP]

Thanks for that, I had tried many permutations but a drop of the Mc did not even occur to me.

Strangely enough his name is shown as Murtrie on the entry but McMurtrie on the IGI. His parents names as shown as McMurtrie.

Hi Annette,

My method was to assume that one of the couple may be wrongly transcribed. So firstly I tried the groom's name, the year and county only. No useful result. Then I tried the bride's name, the year and the county. One result. Staying within the free part of the search on SP, I added the RD name, Stranraer to the criteria, the one result stayed. That was good evidence that I was on the right trail. So by a next try, I added his name, but dropped the "Mc" and "bingo" the one result stayed. If that had failed, I would have tried wildcards to try and narrow it down to the name in their database.

In general, if a Mc/Mac (M*c), or an O' surname person or family does not show up in a search, it is worth fishing for the name without its prefix.

In one of the censuses, I had the opposite problem. Alexander Orr Danks has ended out enumerated as Alexander O'Danks. and the rest of the family with the ditto under O'Danks. I only found it because I knew the address where I was expecting them to be, and found him by browsing the census pages, which is available on NRH's DIGROS system.

All the best,

Andrew Paterson