Missing Marriages in Kilmorich, Argyll?.....

[Laura]

I have been searching for records of people who lived at Glaschoine in the Parish of Kilmorich, Argyll on Scotlandspeople and must be doing something wrong.

The birth record of Annie McKELLAR, 14 FEB 1876, Kilmorich, (GROS Data 527 / 02 0002) lists parents Andrew McKELLAR and Catharine BRODIE with a marriage date of 1865 DEC 15, Parish of Kilmorich. The IGI shows this marriage from Batch No.: M115271.

I have tried various wildcard searches with no luck. A search for all marriages of M*CKELLAR, Andrew, years 1855 to 1929 produced only nine results for the whole of Scotland, but not the one I was looking for.

I have sent a contact form to SOL, but I wonder if someone on this forum has any ideas.

Kind Regards,
Laura

[WilmaM]

I could be stating the obvious here

Have you tried searching just using the bride's names

Remember that a December event will very often be found recorded in the next year's records.

[Laura]

Thanks for your help, Wilma.

No luck with a marriage for Catharine Brodie.

My MCKELLAR family lived at Glaschaoin / Glaschoine / Glaschoigne from the early 1800s and I am trying to sort out the collateral relatives who continued to live there in the twentieth century.

Kind Regards,
Laura

[AndrewP]

I also see no sign of this marriage on the ScotlandsPeople website, even trying a variation of wildcards. I put quite good faith in the IGI for post 1855 entries extracted from the statutory records. My main suspicion is that it is missing from SP's index - it happens, they are human. Hopefully the contact form will lead to the records being manually looked at to find a result in New Register House; and the final result being a correction to the index (probably at NRH as well as online at SP).

Unless of course anyone else can see a result by some other means...

The IGI gives the following marriage and children to the marriage:

• Marriage: ANDREW MCKELLAR / CATHARINE BRODIE
  15 DEC 1865 Lochgoilhead And Kilmorich, Argyll
  
  CATHARINE MCKELLAR - Birth: 09 OCT 1866 Lochgoilhead And Kilmorich, Argyll
  MCKELLAR - Birth: 03 MAR 1868 Lochgoilhead And Kilmorich, Argyll
  JANET MCKELLAR - Birth: 06 AUG 1869 Lochgoilhead And Kilmorich, Argyll
  BELLA MCKELLAR - Birth: 01 APR 1871 Lochgoilhead And Kilmorich, Argyll
  HUGH MCKELLAR - Birth: 25 OCT 1872 Lochgoilhead And Kilmorich, Argyll
  DUNCAN MCKELLAR - Birth: 15 AUG 1874 Lochgoilhead And Kilmorich, Argyll

The child with no first name died before being given a first name - aged 2 days on 6th March 1868 at Rowan Tree Cottage, Kilmorich (cause of death = bowel hives). There may have been more children after 1874 - the IGI stopped there for extract from the statutory records.

All the best,

Andrew Paterson

[DavidWW]

It's not unknown for a couple to give info on a marriage that does not exist in the statutory marriage records when registering a birth because it was an irregular marriage that had not up to that point been "regularised" to the extent of a record then being made in the marriage register, or because there had never been a marriage, regular or otherwise.

What is different here, however, is that LDS have extracted the record from their copy of the relevant microfilm, and the LDS procedures for such an extraction are very strict. In other words there must be an entry in the relevant marriage register for such an entry to appear in IGI! (hopefully that is not a hostage sold to fortune ) - it's against LDS extraction procedures to infer a marriage register entry from the info on birth register entries.

For any new readers let's just revisit the words regular and irregular. These do not equate to legal and illegal. All that regular means is that the marriage was in accordance with the forms, - banns etc., - of whatever church was involved, and then automatically the record would appear in the marriage register.

All that irregular means is that there was no such church process involved, and one of the 3 perfectly legal forms of non-church marriage was used, - up to 1939 when 2 of the forms were made illegal. It was only in 1939 that the possibility of a registry office marriage was introduced.

Many of these irregular marriages subsquently appear in the marriage registers after the couple have gone through the necessary legal process, - Sheriff's Warrant for instance, - which gave them the piece of paper they needed to present to the registrar so that he could then make an entry in the register of marriages, - NB a proportion of such registrations were made some distance from the place of residence of the couple ..... e.g. a couple living in Glasgow would go to the Sheriff Court in Edinburgh and then the Edinburgh registrar.

If the date and even place of the marriage shown on a sequence of birth register entries varies then this can be symptomatic of an irregular marriage, as there will sometimes not be a set of marriage lines or a piece of paper which can be consulted to check the details.

Unfortunately that's not the only such reason for such variations, - the other main one is the husband being the informant, and you know what they say about men and their memory in relation to anniversaries

Davie

[sporran]

Hello Laura,


I think that Andrew is correct in presuming an indexing error, and I have e-mailed people in SP about it. However, one of them is on holiday until 23 May, so the GROS side may take a little longer to sort out.

A search found only 2 marriages in 1865 (June and November), but the results showed Lochgoilhead (527/01). Another search in 1866 brought up results in Kilmorich (527/02), where the first two marriages of the year were in February and June. The registrar's post was probably not a full time job in either place!

Please let us know if you get a reply from SP.


Regards,

John

[Laura]

The child with no first name died before being given a first name - aged 2 days on 6th March 1868 at Rowan Tree Cottage, Kilmorich . . .

Dear Andrew,
Thank you for checking the SP index for the 1868 marriage. Rowan Tree Cottage! I was unable to decipher the handwriting on one document, but what a lovely name for a house.

A researcher in Scotland has made contact with people in the Cairndow area who probably lived in the same house as my ancestor, Duncan MCKELLAR, son of John MCKELLAR and Janet BRYDIE / BRODIE. The house was at Glaschaoin and the records are forming a picture of the evolution of a house over the years. The spelling of Glaschaoin and the house number changes, but the surnames MCKELLAR and BRODIE continue through the generations. Apparently, the MCKELLARs were known as the boatmen for the estate. This is becoming quite the adventure in Argyll.

All the best,
Laura

[Laura]

Unfortunately that's not the only such reason for such variations, - the other main one is the husband being the informant, and you know what they say about men and their memory in relation to anniversaries

The birth record of Annie McKELLAR, 14 FEB 1876, Kilmorich, (GROS Data 527 / 02 0002) lists parents Andrew McKELLAR and Catharine BRODIE with a marriage date of 1865 DEC 15, Parish of Kilmorich. The IGI shows this marriage from Batch No.: M115271.

Davie,
The Registrar who signed the birth record of wee Annie McKELLAR was John BRODIE who was quite possibly related to the baby's mother.

Kind Regards,
Laura

[Laura]

I think that Andrew is correct in presuming an indexing error, and I have e-mailed people in SP about it. However, one of them is on holiday until 23 May, so the GROS side may take a little longer to sort out.

Thank you.

A search found only 2 marriages in 1865 (June and November), but the results showed Lochgoilhead (527/01). Another search in 1866 brought up results in Kilmorich (527/02), where the first two marriages of the year were in February and June. The registrar's post was probably not a full time job in either place!

Hello John,
You raise an interesting point about records in the rural areas of Scotland.
I have a record of a child born 29 JULY 1855 at Cairndow. Unfortunately, her birth wasn't registered until 29 MAR 1856 at Inveraray.

I wonder if the poor census taker was expected to travel by boat from house to house in Argyll?

All the best,
Laura

[DavidWW]

Davie,
The Registrar who signed the birth record of wee Annie McKELLAR was John BRODIE who was quite possibly related to the baby's mother.

Kind Regards,
Laura

The plot thickens !!!

Davie