Marriage Challenges

Marriage Challenges

<p>Running Marriage Challenges</p> <p>Details of the formal requirements for submitting names and conducting a Marriage Challenge (MC) together with a list of are <a href="/marriage-challenges/" target="_blank">given on the main Guild website</a> , together with a list of <a href="/in-progress-or-completed-marriage-challenges/" target="_blank">in progress and completed marriage challenges</a>. These pages serves as an informal repository for guidelines and experiences to be shared by challengers and Guild members. Nothing in these pages should be construed as a requirement for a challenge, unless it is also in the Guild's guidelines.</p> <p>An understanding of the structure of the GRO marriage indexes is useful, and challengers may wish to read Paul Millington's <a href="/members/pdfs/marriage_index.pdf" target="_blank">article in JOONS of July 2001</a>.</p> <p>For a description of what marriage challenges are all about, see the Wiki article <a href="/wiki/guild-wiki/collect/global-sources/marriage-challenges/what-is-a-marriage-challenge/" target="_blank">What is a Marriage Challenge</a>.</p> <p>Challengers may choose to submit their results to the <a href="/members/GMI/gmi.html" target="_blank">Guild Marriage Index</a> (GMI), so understanding how that works is also important.</p> <h3>Choosing the district and range of years</h3> <p>Choosing a suitable Registration District (RD) depends on a number of things. First, is it easy to gain access to the marriage registers? They're generally deposited at a County Record Office (CRO), so choosing a CRO that's local to the Challenger makes sense, but bear in mind that RDs sometimes cross county boundaries and the registers may be separated.</p> <p>Secondly, how big a Challenge will this RD present? To get some idea of the number of potential marriages that may be requested, you could try a count of the marriages held on FreeBMD for a single year in that RD; go to: <a href="http://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/search.pl" target="_blank">FreeBMD</a>, select 'marriages', the RD and the year and click on 'Count'. To give you some idea of how variable their size can be, here are some figures for the number of marriages in 1870 for an arbitrary list of RDs:-</p> <ul> <li>Mile End 1089;</li> <li>Pancras 4274,</li> <li>Whitechapel 1089;</li> <li>Worcester 535,</li> <li>Norwich 1430;</li> <li>West Derby 5147;</li> <li>Winchester 414,</li> <li>Aston 2271;</li> <li>Westhampnett 267;</li> <li>Halifax 3091.</li> </ul> <p>Alternatively look at FreeBMD's <a href="http://www.freebmd.org.uk/district-page-map-index.html" target="_blank">mapping of pages to districts</a> which will show how many pages per quarter there are throughout the period.</p> <p>The number of marriages in the RD is not the only measure of the Challenge, however. Bearing in mind that the Challenger will potentially have to search through each register for each church, another important factor is the number of churches within the RD. Some ancient towns (e.g., Norwich, Lincoln, City of London) have very many churches within a small area and each might need to be examined. Large towns, although heavily populated, tend to have fewer churches with very large congregations.</p> <p>Finally, there is no requirement to try and cover the whole Victorian era in a single Challenge, and so a Challenger can set the period covered. If the size of the most appropriate RD is daunting, then it makes sense to issue a Challenge that covers a limited period, say 10 or 20 years, or, as the volume numbers changed at the end of 1851, the range 1837 Q3 to 1851 Q4 inclusive may be convenient. It is better to start small and complete the task with ease than to undertake too big a time span and find the challenge becomes a chore. If you enjoy the experience, you can always come back another time and do more!</p> <h3>Registering and advertising your challenge</h3> <p>You are strongly recommended to register your MC with the Marriage Challenge Co-ordinator (currently this is Peter Copsey). That way, we can avoid clashes and Challengers can benefit from having their out-of-pocket expenses paid from Guild funds. It also means that the Challenge will be added to the <a href="/marriage-challenges/" target="_blank">Marriage Challenge page</a> on the Guild website where members can find it.</p> <p>There are clearly three primary ways to advertise your Challenge; through the Journal, on the Rootsweb Mailing List or in the Guild's Facebook group; all are to be recommended, but it's important to recognise the difference. The Rootsweb list and the Facebook group are the more immediate mediums; if you issue your Challenge on Rootsweb or on Facebook, you'll have a batch of requests from all over the world in your possession inside 24 hours. If your Challenge is mentioned in the Journal, which is issued quarterly, it may be several months before you have received all the requests. But bear in mind that the majority of Guild members are NOT on the Rootsweb list or on Facebook, so if you want to offer your Challenge to the widest possible group, the Journal is important to you.</p> <p>To accommodate the two different groups, it makes sense to set a deadline for the submission of the requests. This is probably best set about three weeks after you can expect the Journal to have reached all the members, worldwide, so that you maximise the response. Setting a deadline has the added advantage that you won't have to go back to previously-searched registers if the requests arrive in drips and drabs. This shouldn't stop you from making an earlier announcement on the Forum, of course, which would help you to assemble the requests into your preferred format.</p> <p>When you announce your Challenge, you will receive marriage index data in all sorts of formats, with the fields in any number of sequences. It can take an enormous amount of time to collate all the data from submitters into one spreadsheet. Therefore you might want to specify how you wish to receive the data. For example: "Please put the fields a spreadsheet or word-processed table in this order: Year#Quarter#SURNAME#First names#Vol#Page#Your own name#your email address. Please express the quarter as a plain numeral - 1, 2, 3 or 4."</p> <p>Many Challengers specify that they would like their requests in the standard format given on the <a href="/marriage-challenges/" target="_blank">Marriage Challenge page</a>, using the <a href="/members/fauxcerts/requests.xls" target="_blank">spreadsheet provided</a>. If used, this will also simplify the process of preparing faux certificates if used (see below), and also inputting the data into the Guild Marriage Index.</p> <p>If marriages are likely to appear on the International Genealogical Index (IGI), ask for details of Parish Church, Date and Spouse's name, the latter being most useful when looking at certificates with poor or smudged handwriting. The IGI data will help you find entries quickly and also help you when establishing Cardinal Points. The FreeBMD <a href="http://www.freebmd.org.uk/district-page-map-index.html" target="_blank">district page map</a> is also useful to help check for miscopied page numbers supplied by submitters which fall outside the range for the district.</p> <h3>Cardinal points</h3> <p>A Cardinal Point (CP) is one of a pair; it is the GRO Index page number for either the first or the last marriage at a particular church (or other marriage location) in an RD, in a given year and quarter. If you have the CPs for all the marriage locations in an RD, it's possible to unambiguously identify where a marriage took place - simply from its GRO Index page number. Usually Anglican churches are followed by non-conformist and Register Office weddings, but sometimes the Register Office register entries (which include both marriages in the Register Office and those attended by the Registrar elsewhere) come at the beginning of the Quarterly Returns.</p> <h4>Collecting and using all CPs</h4> <p>CPs can be a tremendous help in finding a marriage; instead of wading through every parish register for the RD, checking against the requests for that quarter, you will already know where the requested marriage took place. It's then just a matter of finding the marriage within the register for that quarter. You can do this reasonably accurately, because each GRO Index page consisted of 2 marriages (4 marriages before 1852) and some simple arithmetic will enable you to predict which register entry will correspond to the GRO Index page.</p> <p>And now for the bad news... Collecting CPs is pretty tedious! Although it's a straightforward exercise, it doesn't have those ''aha!'' moments that you get from the Challenge itself. It also takes time, and because it becomes a very long slog for the rural areas, with all their tiny parishes, CPs are more suitable for those large, urban RDs, like the London districts. If you would like to use CPs in preparation for your Challenge, Mary Rix can supply a spreadsheet for recording them.</p> <h4>Using CPs at decadal intervals</h4> <p>A variation on this concept is the 'decennial CP'. The GRO Indexers would, in the main, stick to the same sequence of churches (not always alphabetical), so the idea here is to get a general sense of the sequence within an RD by collecting the CPs at 10 year intervals. That means you can get a better idea where to find a requested marriage; or, at least, to narrow your search down to two or three churches.</p> <h3>Things you can do before the challenge starts</h3> <p>There are many things you can do before your challenge deadline arrives. Indeed there is much preparation work you can do before volunteering to take on a challenge. It is advisable to arrange any assistance required before volunteering. A registration district which crosses county borders and necessitates visits to more than one Record Office is certainly better carried out by cooperation between two or more people. It may complicate matters but the results will be more valuable to those requesting details of marriages as they would otherwise have to arrange to visit two offices to be sure of finding what they were looking for.</p> <p>There is a list of civil parishes in <a href="http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/genuki/reg/districts/index.html" target="_blank">each registration district</a>. Civil parishes were initially based on ecclesiastical parishes, but as the 19th century progressed the CPs and EPs diverged more and more. So you can use the list as starting point for finding the ecclesiastical parishes in the district, but should not take it as a complete list. It is worth checking the relevant parish pages on <a href="http://www.genuki.org.uk/" target="_blank">Genuki</a> to see if any additional churches or chapels are mentioned, which should be added to the list. On a copy of this list note which registers are deposited at the Record Office, which parts have been filmed, the film or fiche reference numbers and the original document reference numbers. To plan your work it helps to have a rough idea as to how many marriages there are in each parish and this can be expressed as a number of whole and/or fractions of, full 500 page registers.</p> <p>You may perhaps find that many parishes have been filmed up to 1900 or thereabouts and the remaining years up to 1911 can only be accessed by looking at the original register. A brief composite index of these part registers may be a good idea. Use the following column headings on a spreadsheet:</p> <ul> <li>Parish name</li> <li>Sequential number of marriage in register</li> <li>SURNAME of Groom</li> <li>SURNAME of Bride</li> <li>Date (expressed as for example 6 = 1 Jan 1860 to 31 Dec 1869). The date column is optional.</li> </ul> <p>The advantage of indexing all of a small RD (or perhaps only those parts of a larger RD which are other than full 500 page registers), is that the work can be done before the deadline. When all the requests are in you just filter for the names in the Groom column and Bride column and you have a composite list which you or someone else can take to the RO, and there you would look, only at the marriages listed and record the full details.<br /> <br /> By including a date column in the index you make it possible to search for the marriage of a Miss Brown, in Thetford RD in the 4th quarter of 1882. Filter Brides for BROWN and Date for 8 and you have a short list of places to look for this particular marriage. It is not useful to input dates more precisely than providing an indication of the decade. In fact it would not only be time consuming to do this but we do not want anybody to deduce facts from the index without looking at the original register entries. Given that the index would not include all marriages there is plenty of scope for incorrect deductions.</p> <p>For GOONS the date is not important but it could be of use to members of a local FHS and would it perhaps be a way of involving them in the project by arranging for volunteers to produce the indexes of parishes which you would then collate?</p> <p>Registration Districts vary enormously, in the number of parishes involved and the number of registers which have to be searched. It is perfectly practical to index the whole of a small rural district which perhaps has less than 7,000 marriages 1837 to 1911. These techniques could still be useful in larger Urban districts to index part registers or non conformist registers. Yes, an initial investment of time is required but the advantages are obvious if you intend to carry out a repeat challenge at a future date. Additionally as new members join you could access your index and identify their marriages quite easily.</p> <h3>Internet sources to assist with a challenge</h3> <p>Local BMD indexes, often compiled by Family History Societies working with Registrars can be a source of information on which church a marriage occurred in. A complete list of these is given at <a href="http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/" target="_blank">UKBMD</a>. Similarly the <a href="/wiki/guild-wiki/collect/global-sources/international-genealogical-index/" target="_blank">International Genealogical Index</a> can be used to find marriage locations when it covers relevant parishes and years, and with some effort it can be used to locate CPs for those parishes. Other local marriage indexes may also be used.</p> <h3>Using the GMI to find 'approximate' CPs</h3> <p>The GMI is an essential source and Mary Rix will supply relevant entries, but you can also use the 'GRO Place Search' function on the left hand side of the GMI Search page. If you identify the RD and quarter, you'll get a list something like this query, made in January 2006:<br /> {Year: 1849 Quarter: 3 Volume: 1</p> <p>district page location exact date<br /> St Geo Han Sq 57 St George Hanover Square 12 Jul 1849<br /> St Giles 65 Bloomsbury St George 1 Jul 1849<br /> St Giles 73 Bloomsbury St George 19 Aug 1849<br /> St Giles 83 Bloomsbury St George 26 Sep 1849<br /> St Jas Westminster 91 Westminster St James 9 Sep 1849<br /> St Jas Westminster 112 Westminster St James 26 Jul 1849<br /> St Jas Westminster 129 Westminster St James 30 Sep 1849<br /> St Martin 135 St Martin in the Fields 1 Jul 1849<br /> St Martin 159 St Martin in the Fields 20 Aug 1849<br /> St Martin 166 St Martin in the Fields 6 Sep 1849<br /> St Martin 169 St Martin in the Fields 10 Sep 1849<br /> Marylebone 218 St Mary Bryanston Sq 5 Jul 1849<br /> Pancras 311 St Pancras 8 Jul 1849<br /> Pancras 317 St Pancras 15 Jul 1849<br /> Pancras 327 St Pancras 24 Jul 1849<br /> Pancras 338 St Pancras 8 Aug 1849<br /> Pancras 344 St Pancras 16 Aug 1849<br /> Pancras 362 St Pancras 9 Sep 1849<br /> Pancras 363 St Pancras 10 Sep 1849<br /> Pancras 371 St Pancras 23 Sep 1849<br /> Strand 395 St Anne Soho 9 Sep 1849<br /> Strand 402 St Clement Danes 3 Sep 1849<br /> Strand 407 St Mary le Strand 17 Jul 1849<br /> Pancras 540 St Pancras 12 Aug 1849}<br /> (You will get more details if you check the box with the label 'Full details required')</p> <p>Some of these marriages are the outcome of a Marriage Challenge (Pancras was the very first MC, for instance), and 2 of the Bloomsbury entries are CPs, but the entries for St Martin in the Fields are just 'normal' GMI entries and you can get a really good idea of the range of the page numbers used for that church in that quarter.</p> <p>Each MC request should offer you a GRO page number and, using this query, you might be able to identify the church - or get close to it. If a request for this quarter contains a page number between 135 and 169, for instance, it certainly took place in St Martin in the Fields. If the page number is, say, 405, then it will be either St Clement Danes or St Mary le Strand or one other that sneaks in the gap between 402 and 407. (Notice the sequence of churches in the Strand district, by the way - they're alphabetical. The church in the gap might be one with a dedication to a saint that has an initial letter between C and M).</p> <h3>Enlisting help</h3> <p>Other members of the Guild may be prepared to help you: it depends where you are in the country and how many members live within reach of the Record Office.</p> <p>Asking on the Rootsweb mailing list or in the Facebook group will produce one or two helpers, but not nearly enough for a large challenge. One Challenger looked up submitters in the online Register and used the Regional Representatives’ page in the online Members' Room to see who lived within travelling distance of the RO where the Challenge was taking place. You could also contact the local Family History Society to locate other potential helpers. Sending a blanket request will be less effective in recruiting volunteers than sending each person an individual email or letter requesting help.</p> <h3>Distributing your findings</h3> <h4>Faux certificates</h4> <p>Many challengers like to reproduce the layout of a marriage certificate and send results in that format, either electronically or on paper. Several past challengers have their own Word or Excel methods of doing this, but the Guild website offers an <a href="/faux-certificate-production/" target="_blank">online facility for creating faux certificates as pdf files from a spreadsheet</a>.</p> <h4>Manuscript certificates</h4> <p>Some Challengers prefer to transcribe the marriage information on to a blank faux certificate form, and to post these to the submitters. This method reduces the number of times the information is copied, but also requires neat handwriting!</p> <h4>Downloadable spreadsheet</h4> <p>Larger challenges produce an enormous amount of data - for instance, St George Hanover Square part 1 spreadsheet was over 6mb. Some challengers choose to send the whole spreadsheet or dataset to each submitter. One way of doing this is to use a file sending facility such as:</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://filesend.net" target="_blank">FileSend</a> – apparently used by the LDS' digital Photo Duplication service.</li> <li><a href="http://www.datasend.co.uk/" target="_blank">Datasend</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.sendspace.com/premium_upgrade.html" target="_blank">Sendspace</a></li> <li><a href="https://docs.google.com" target="_blank">Google Docs</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.mailbigfile.com" target="_blank">Mail Big File</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.box.com" target="_blank">Box</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.sendthisfile.com/features/send-large-files/index.jsp" target="_blank">SendThisFile</a></li> <li><strong>Amazon Cloud</strong> 5Gb of storage comes free with an Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com account, more than enough for most challenges. Once you have uploaded the file, then you can make it shareable and provide the url link to your submitters. Recipients do not need to be Amazon account-holders. <ul> <li>(Go to the Amazon Your Account page and do a page search for Amazon Cloud.) Use your favourite email provider to set up a separate disposable email address, e.g. SGHSquare, and use this email address to create a new and neutral Amazon login.</li> </ul> </li> <li><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/" target="_blank">Dropbox Share</a> Appears to be similar to Amazon Cloud although you seem to need a Dropbox account to set up file sharing. Recipients do not need a Dropbox account.</li> </ul> <p>Dropbox and Amazon Cloud have both been used successfully by Challengers.</p> <h3>Some of the many ways of carrying out the Challenge</h3> <p>There are many different approaches depending on a wide range of variables</p> <p>For example – are you going to use a laptop or a faux certificate to record the marriage data that you find? Is the Registration District largely urban or rural, as ascertained earlier in the planning process?</p> <p>For a MC in an urban district – one might go through a major parish church's marriage records once only, collecting the first cardinal point for a quarter, check the GRO page number and then look for any requested marriages after that page number, until reaching the last marriage in the quarter, which would be noted as a CP and the GRO page number found. Any requested marriages after this page would be dealt with later. Similarly requested marriages before the first cardinal point would be dealt with separately. Then move on to the next Quarter and repeat the process.</p> <p>However this method of working relies on the availability of GRO indexes at the same venue as you are viewing the parish register fiches or films.</p> <p>And don't forget that successful challenges have been carried out in Scotland and the USA, so there is no restriction to England and Wales.</p>