dennis bramble wrote: > Your reply to my posting today. First I must apologise fo my > mistake in typing CMB. It should have been as you stated BMD. Umm, sorry but you stated BMD when it should have been CMB. > As to the 2nd.part of your answer it is not nor was the custom to > make entries into the registers some time after the events took > place nor was it the custom to write details on scraps of paper and > enter later. Again, sorry, the registers weren't made up at the time of the events, with the exception obviously of the marriages. It's very clear from the consistency of the writing that the registers were made up periodically and not on the day. > It possibly did happen occasionally and possibly for a good reason. > But why should it have been anything but rare? It wasn't a rare occurrence. It doesn't seem to be an especially rare occurence now from the modern registers (up to 1992) that I've seen. > After all, almost all the events took place in church and that is > where the registers are kept. So why not enter the details once > only and at the time of the event? You'd have to ask long dead clergymen, their parish clerks or those who made up the registers why they didn't do it at the time. Just because events (mostly) took place in the church and where the registers were usually kept, it doesn't mean the entries were made straight into the registers. It is quite clear they weren't. In fact, if you have a look on Ancestry's London Parish database (which also covers a number of parishes in Kent) you will find a number of examples of what are known as "Day Books", where details of events were noted before being written up in the registers themselves. Then you've got the discrepencies between the parish registers and the Bishop's Transcripts. They should be the same but there are frequently differences found between the two. > In the case of marriage the register entry is in fact the > certificate and has as such to be signed by bride and groom > ,witnesses and the officiating clergy. Obviously the marriages had to be done at the time. They couldn't not be. > Previous to the 1837 legal requirement to record birth, marriage > and death, the only standard document to be found is the record of > baptism, marriage and burial. Nobody is disputing that. > That is a legal requirement placed on the Anglican Church, (C of E) > and of no other organisation although some other religious > organisations did voluntarily keep such records. Sorry, but you're wrong. Jews and Quakers were allowed to maintain their own records because they were deemed to keep proper records. Other faiths, religions, denominations, etc didn't voluntarily keep such records. They maintained their own in accordance with their rules. Such records just weren't recognised as being "legal". Many non conformist families would baptise their children in their own church or chapel, then have another baptism in the local CoE church. A CoE baptism could be a condition of marriage in the CoE because only such a marriage was legal and prevented the couple from being decried as "living in sin" even though they may have been married in their own church/chapel. Employers might ask for a copy of a baptismal certificate, as my grandmother was and also my great grandfather. > For over 20 years I have been reading parish registers both here in > the West Country and particularly in Kent. This has involved many > visits to record offices including The National Archives and it is > from this experience that I have given this opinion. My comments are based on my experience since 1968 of a great many parish registers in a wide number of record offices doing research on some 30 of my own family lines, my experience as an OPC, as a transcriber for the LDS transcription project and FreeREG, as well as doing regularly doing look ups for others. I also proof read for other transcribers. A little while ago on one list, I offered an opinion about man based solely on his signature. I drew on my experience of reading signatures in a vast number of marriage registers. How accurate was my opinion? Almost spot on and the man in question was nothing to do with me or with any of my family lines! -- Charani (UK) OPC for Walton, Greinton and Clutton, SOM Asst OPC for Ashcott and Shapwick, SOM http://wsom-opc.org.uk