Saunders - Donald Marriage, Ayrshire.....

jonsaunders · Post by **jonsaunders** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 11:03 am

Hello! I need help tracking down the marriage of relatives in Ayrshire, around 1909.
The marriage of Harry Saunders to Margaret Boag Donald reportedly took place in June 1909, probably in Mauchline, Ayrshire. I can find no record on scotlandspeople.gov.uk, so I'd like to know if either anyone can find a record of this marriage, or if anyone knows how a legal marriage could have been conducted at that time (ie church marriage, registry office...?) and whether/where all of the available methods would have been recorded.

I'll be most grateful for any clues. Thanks!

Post by **joette** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 1:00 pm

Hi Jon & welcome to Talking Scot.
There is somewhere on the site a very full explanation by David WW on the various forms of marriage in Scotland.(having a mature moment & can't find the link)
In the time scale you are looking at there were three forms of legal marriage in Scotland
1-You married after the forms of whatever Church you were a member of eg Church of scotland-the marriage would be performed by a Minister/Priest but not neccesarily in the Church.Most marriages were performed at home or in the Manse.
2-You were married by habit& repute-people accepted you were a couple & you shared the same surname.
3-Marriage in front of at least two witnesses-which could be then registered at any time.
I am sure there are variations on a theme but I think that is it basically.
Maybe you are not finding it because they married later/earlier than you thought.
The name may have a spelling variation-have you used wildcards in your search?

LesleyB · Post by **LesleyB** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 1:30 pm

Hi Jon & Joette
Joette - was it this article?
http://talkingscot.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3726

You need to watch out for when those mature moments all join up!!

Best wishes
Lesley

jonsaunders · Post by **jonsaunders** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 2:07 pm

Thanks Joette and Lesley.

In the article we read 'However if the couple wished to register the marriage...'. Does this mean that a marriage by declaration of present consent could be legal without being registered, in which case it wouldn't appear on any register?

Jon

LesleyB · Post by **LesleyB** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 2:48 pm

Hi Jon
I think the short answer to that is - yes!

And, oh, er...a warm welcome to Talking Scot!

Best wishes
Lesley

jonsaunders · Post by **jonsaunders** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 3:11 pm

OK, I suppose that could be good news, or not, depending on your point of view...

Thanks for your help, and warm welcome

Jon

Post by **joette** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 3:47 pm

Thanks for that Lesley I am claiming heat prostration even if it's only 24 today!

DavidWW · Post by **DavidWW** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 6:04 pm

jonsaunders wrote:Thanks Joette and Lesley.

In the article we read 'However if the couple wished to register the marriage...'. Does this mean that a marriage by declaration of present consent could be legal without being registered, in which case it wouldn't appear on any register?

Jon

Jon

Not "could be legal", - in the eyes of Scots law, - all irregular marriages were perfectly legal; and there was no compulsion at all to go through the Sheriff Court warrant or other processes in order for there to be a subsequent entry in the register of marriages.

Which leads to the question of how many irregular marriages were never registered?, the answer being that it's probably near impossible to get an exact figure.

There's a couple of ways in which it might be possible to get some indication, - (a) select a decent sample of birth register entries, and see in what number of cases the marriage isn't traceable (later - but this won't pick up situations where the couple assumed that they could only give a place and date if they had an entry in the register of marriages, so didn't provide date/place info, - the birth appearing to be illegitimate as result

), and (b) select a decent sample of death register entries for married couples and, similarly, see how many marriages are untraceable, except the complication creeps in of marriages outside Scotland. There's probably several more flaws in my logic

BTW it's probable that, buried somewhere in the records of the former Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance (MPNI) and successor ministries that there could be statistics that might provide an accurate figure, - deriving from applications for a widow's pension where there was no marriage certificate since the marriage had been irregular,- I have vague memory from somewhere (my father was a senior civil servant in the MPNI!) that all that was required was a sworn statement together with a visit from an investigative officer from the MPNI.

A population statistician or actuary could probably work out lower and upper limits to a good confidence level, i.e. unlikely to have been less than XXXXX, and unlikely to have been more than YYYYYY ........... but the range of figures could well be large.
Who knows, in some arcane professional journal there might just be an article on the subject !!

There's certainly significant numbers of marriage register entries based on the Sheriff's Warrant process, which would lead me to suspect that there were equally many which went unregistered, - any volunteers to check on a range of annual Registrar General's reports to see if there was a statistic relating to the number of such marriages?

David