Hi
I recently got an extract of a marriage certificate from the GRO in England for my Gt GT Gran. She was born in Wales, married in Liverpool and died in Glasgow. I already knew a fair bit about her and her husband and both sets of parents but I thought it would be neat to get the marriage extract just to complete things. That's where the confusion started. My Gt Gt Gran's father was a watchmaker, her husband was a labourer and his father was a labourer too. But the GRO extract gives the occupations as butcher, police officer and grocer. All the names and dates match perfectly so I am wondering why the occupations are so far off the mark. Would they have deliberately given false information when they got married ? Or has the GRO mixed things up a bit ?
Cheers
Jim
GRO Extracts
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nelmit
- Posts: 4002
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Re: GRO Extracts
Hi Jim,thomsj1 wrote:Hi
I recently got an extract of a marriage certificate from the GRO in England for my Gt GT Gran. She was born in Wales, married in Liverpool and died in Glasgow. I already knew a fair bit about her and her husband and both sets of parents but I thought it would be neat to get the marriage extract just to complete things. That's where the confusion started. My Gt Gt Gran's father was a watchmaker, her husband was a labourer and his father was a labourer too. But the GRO extract gives the occupations as butcher, police officer and grocer. All the names and dates match perfectly so I am wondering why the occupations are so far off the mark. Would they have deliberately given false information when they got married ? Or has the GRO mixed things up a bit ?
Cheers
Jim
Just depends what they were doing at that particular time.
Have you been able to follow them through the census records - sometimes you can see the occupation changes that way, although watchmaker to butcher is a bit strange.
One of mine was a cotton carder, grocer and sawyer in his lifetime.
Regards,
Annette
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thomsj1
- Posts: 18
- Joined: Sat Sep 16, 2006 1:01 pm
- Location: Cumbernauld
Hi Annette
The watchmaker bit is 100% certain. He's on the Welsh census from 1851 > 1891 as a watchmaker and his death certificate in 1899 confirms it. He was never a butcher. The thing is that with the dates and names (including middle names) being correct on the marriage extract it must be the right record.
Reckon I'll just have to go to Liverpool Records Office and check it out for myself
Cheers
Jim
The watchmaker bit is 100% certain. He's on the Welsh census from 1851 > 1891 as a watchmaker and his death certificate in 1899 confirms it. He was never a butcher. The thing is that with the dates and names (including middle names) being correct on the marriage extract it must be the right record.
Reckon I'll just have to go to Liverpool Records Office and check it out for myself
Cheers
Jim
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Currie
- Posts: 3924
- Joined: Fri Jun 22, 2007 3:20 am
- Location: Australia
Hello Jim,
There’s not a lot of useful information on an English marriage record and there’s always the possibility that the marriage may be the wrong one. The chances may depend on how common the names are. The Welsh have a very limited range of surnames. According to this page in Wales the 10 most common surnames made up 55% of the whole whereas in England the 10 most common surnames made up only 5% of the whole. I don’t know what the Scottish figures are. Possibly because of this there is more chance of coming across marriages with identical names. http://home.clara.net/tirbach/HelpPagep ... l#Surnames
It may be a good idea to see if you can find someone in the census by the same name who is a butcher, and so on, to see if there's someone else who matches the certificate. Especially if you’re only relying on names and don’t have something like a Scottish birth of a child that gives the marriage date of the parents.
Just a thought,
Alan
There’s not a lot of useful information on an English marriage record and there’s always the possibility that the marriage may be the wrong one. The chances may depend on how common the names are. The Welsh have a very limited range of surnames. According to this page in Wales the 10 most common surnames made up 55% of the whole whereas in England the 10 most common surnames made up only 5% of the whole. I don’t know what the Scottish figures are. Possibly because of this there is more chance of coming across marriages with identical names. http://home.clara.net/tirbach/HelpPagep ... l#Surnames
It may be a good idea to see if you can find someone in the census by the same name who is a butcher, and so on, to see if there's someone else who matches the certificate. Especially if you’re only relying on names and don’t have something like a Scottish birth of a child that gives the marriage date of the parents.
Just a thought,
Alan