Missing marriage records in Civil Register

Dun

Just wondering if many people have found marriages that definitely took place, but that weren't registered in the civil registration?

Just one example was the marriage of my ggGrandparents in Donegal in 1865, which I found in the parish marriage register. I was able to get a picture of the register page, and then I looked at the corresponding civil register for the district at that time, and can see only several of the marriages on it.

What's frustrating about the whole thing is that I don't know the husband's father's name, so it would've been a real bonus to find it, but no luck.

pinkypinky

I've only come across once slip up in the 1870s - found the parish but not the civil and it was not on the LDS indexes either. Deaths are the ones most likely to be omitted - if you consider that births were important to register to avoid fines and marriages had more than one person to remember to do it!

shanew

It could be the case that the names have been misread - either during the original creation of the GRO index books, or during the familysearch transcriptions. The details could also have been simply omitted due to some sort of mistake... it was only the 2nd year of full civil registration.

In case they names have been messed up it is worth searching for them in the relevant year and registration district using just surname or forename - and see if a match can be found that way... depending on the size of the district, and how common the names are there could be quite a few matches - but might be worth a try just to be sure.



Shane

Dun

The marriage took place in the RC church in Crossroads, Killygordon Co. Donegal - Patrick Lynch and Eliza Hart on 24 of either April or May, 1865:


The corresponding Registration district is Killygordon, within the Supervisor's Registration District of Stranorlar. I went through all the books of Stranorlar, and neighbouring districts Strabane and Castlederg, and even Letterkenny for the whole year of 1865, but no luck. However there are other entries on that picture that are also missing from the Civil Register, leading me to wonder if it's a lot more common than I thought. Edit: There are also entries that are in the civil register.

I went to the local registry in Letterkenny, where they looked through the book for the area and didn't find anything either. Neither the Lynches nor Harts were numerous in the area.

Dun

Actually, that's the first time I've looked at that image and it really looks like May and not just a blob on the page. What do you think?

P. Breathnach

I can't see "May". But I can see "April" further up the page. As I judge it, there are marriages recorded on April 18 and 23. The next entry is ??? 10, which seems unlikely to be another date in April, so I judge that we are now in May.

Larkenn

I've done a little digging on the familysearch site and think i may have come up with something.

A 'Lizzie Hart' married a 'Philip Lynch' in Londonderry in 1865 - vol 7 pg 205.

The more I've researched my family tree, the more I've noticed huge discrepancies in the records. On my grandfathers marriage cert he's named his father as Bernard. After wasting days searching for a Bernard I found my granddads birthcert and on it his dad is named Daniel. Two very different names. It happens all the time unfortunately. Its what makes Irish family history so frustratingly annoying.

Dun

Thanks Larkenn, but I spotted that already and had a look and it's definitely not the couple, as they got married in St. Columb's in Derry and the wife's father is wrong (thank God for the FHC, not having to pay €6 to verify these things ). Also that couple had children in Derry at times that the other couple were having children in Crossroads.