I had requested a reproduction of a parish register marriage entry from the familyseach site, mainly to see the names of the witnesses, and on receiving it I noticed that the father’s name for the bride was missing. I knew that the bride’s father’s name was Thomas Botham, as the bride, Hannah Botham, was the sister of my great great grandfather, William Botham. I also noticed that the marriage entry above the one I was interested in did not have the bride’s father’s name recorded either, see the image below.
Then I remembered the year of the marriage, 1837. Both marriages had occurred within a few months of the start of civil registration on the 1st July. In fact you will see from the above image that these marriages were numbered 1 and 2, presumably the first marriages that the clergyman in this parish had performed since the change of the format of the registration books. I am guessing that consequently he had not understood that he had to record the father’s name of the bride as well as that of the groom. How many more marriages he recorded this way I do not know, but it is perhaps worth bearing in mind that this error might also have occurred in other parishes at the start of civil registration.
