Hello Keith On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 7:26 AM, > What does "of this parish" mean? > > What are the chances of Thomas Griffiths actually being born in St Peters > parish? "OTP" often means very lttle. At the time of the banns being read you had to do little more than provide an address in the parish. This address, in populous urban parishes in particular could mean lttle more than you had left a bag there and probably paid the occupant for the privilege. Such claims to an address were not always, and in some cases even seldom, checked - there is an interesting and amusing court case (though later than 1757) where the task of checking residence was passed from vicar to curate to churchwarden to clerk to sexton and then to the pew-opener who found it all too much for her ! Though if in 1757 the parish was small and rural, as it probably was, then the chances of it having some meaning would have been quite high. But that meaning did not include the necessity of birth in the parish. Jim Halsey