In a message dated 10/11/2009 05:50:37 GMT Standard Time, mrscal@hotmail.com writes: the places of birth suggest that none of the families were living in Newcastle at the time of the marriages, though would have been in the area. Carol Ann: I don't really follow the logic of this. The name of anyone's birthplace is not really relevant to where they might be living at the time they were married. At that time, even more than now, people moved around quite a lot, usually in connection with their work, or to find new work. Newcastle, like many British towns and cities, was expanding at a very rapid rate and so was drawing into it people from all over the country. The only little bit of caution I would advise is that you should remember that the tradition was, then as now, to have a wedding, if it was a church wedding, in the parish of which the bride was a resident, so the bridegrooms might have travelled in from outside, to marry girls living in Newcastle. However, as we have a triple case of brothers marrying sisters, even that seems unlikely, so I would recommend you to think of them all as living in Newcastle at the time but having been born, possibly anywhere. The 1881 census, freely available on-line and elsewhere, should answer that for you, and FreeCMB would probably also be useful. Market Street is one of the main shopping streets of Newcastle, but at that time it did have at least one Hotel, plus rooms above some of the shops which could well have functioned as living accomodation - when built in the ?1840s, the properties were referred to as "houses". Apart from that, some families would have lived there as caretakers etc of the shops below them. Geoff Nicholson