Morning Keith "Of this Parish" means that he was living there at the time of the event as was his spouse Elizabeth. The chances of them having been born in that parish are very good, and a search of the birth registers will prove or disprove it. I usually take a persons age at marriage as being 18. This obviously may not correct, but I have found it to be as good an estimate as one can get. Cheers Roy -----Original Message----- From: old-english-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:old-english-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Keith Griffiths Sent: 13 July 2009 07:26 To: Old English mailing list Subject: [OEL] Banns I thought I'd catch up on researching on my own family rather than the local history of where I live in Kent. The banns of marriage were read in the parish of St Peters Church, Wolverhampton on the Sundays of 18 Sep, 25 Sep and 2 Oct in 1757. It was between "Thomas Griffiths of this parish bachelor and Elizabeth Aston of the same spinster". The marriage was recorded as taking place at St Peters on 24 Oct 1757, she a spinster and he a bachelor. Witnesses, William Steventon and John Cartee. I note that the five entries on the banns page all say "of this parish" for both the male and female. And in the parish records for the marriage, a few entries say "both of this parish" or give the parish of where they are from. For Thomas and Elizabeth nothing is written. I don't have substantive evidence of their ages only that as a bachelor and spinster possibly that they were born in 1757 less the average age of marriage. My questions are:: What does "of this parish" mean? What are the chances of Thomas Griffiths actually being born in St Peters parish? I suspect the answer to the last question is how long is a piece of string but any advice would be appreciated. ~~ Keith Elmsted ==================================== WEB PAGE: http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~oel/ ARCHIVES: http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index?list=OLD-ENGLISH ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to OLD-ENGLISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message