In a message dated 07/12/2009 15:42:18 GMT Standard Time, macpark@ntlworld.com writes: I am trying to find a marriage record for Isabella Miller who married Robert Paxton in c 1832. I think they were married in Tweedmouth in England but I can find no record of the marriage. They had a son, Robert, who was born in 1833 and they lived,worked and died in Tweedmouth and are found there in al the census. All help greatly appreciated as I want to try and trace Isabella's parents. Susan Susan: After referring to the NDFHS index of ALL marriages in Northumberland 1813-37 I can say that this couple were not married, at least not under the names and spellings you give, anywhere in Northumberland in that period. Possibly the clerk recorded their names with some unconventional spelling, but I would have probably noticed if that had been the case. I have also looked at the two NDFHS volumes of marriages at Lamberton Toll and other Border Marriage Houses, but they did not reveal it either. I suspect that, like many other families from north Northumberland, their roots lay in Scotland and as a result they were Presbyterians (the Church of Scotland, the Kirk, is Presbyterian). As such they would hold their baptisms at local Presbyterian churches, of which there were many, and their burials would more or less have to be in the local churchyard, as there was nowhere else at that time. However, until 1837 the Law said that all weddings in England or Wales had to be in a Church of England parish church. The only way out for English Presbyterians was to cross the nearby Border and go into Scotland. There they would have the choice of either marrying in a Church of Scotland church or of marrying "by declaration in front of witnesses", which they could do anywhere, a favourite for English Presbyterians being in a Border Marriage House. The best-known of those were at the western end of the Border, at Gretna Green, but at the eastern end ("our end") there were several, including the major one at Lamberton Toll, at the point where the London to Edinburgh "Great North Road", now the A1 crosses the Border. People there were in Scotland all right, but only by a few feet. Some of the records of the Marriage Houses have been destroyed, some survive but are either in private hands or are with solicitors etc who charge inordinate fees for access, some are deposited in institutions, usually Scottish ones, and a precious handful have been published, the two NDFHS volumes I have referred to being just about all that is available for the eastern end of the Border. The best collection of such records, transcripts and indexes of such records, is that of Northumberland County Record Office, at Woodhorn. Geoff Nicholson