Eve, I am sure you are correct where the custom is as you said, which may be many places. However the large parish I know most well has, in over 300 plus years of parish registers, with rectors and clerks both very careful and precise and others rather laxer, not one use of the word sojourner or anything having the same meaning. Brides and grooms are either of Melford (Long Melford in Suffolk) or they are of somewhere else, nothing else offered. I am sure this is local custom being continued by each clerk and or rector as they come along; there's certainly no evidence of any link between how people are described in the parish register and their settlement status. Lyn B

In message <000001c3f5aa$8ba49390$e4d14d51@lynhome>, Lyn Boothman <annys@boothman27.fsnet.co.uk> writes > >Eve, I am sure you are correct where the custom is as you said, which >may be many places. However the large parish I know most well has, in >over 300 plus years of parish registers, with rectors and clerks both >very careful and precise and others rather laxer, not one use of the >word sojourner or anything having the same meaning. Brides and grooms >are either of Melford (Long Melford in Suffolk) I am judging by the entries in the many thousands of registers all over the country I have searched during the course of research. Long melford may have its own customs, but this would not apply to the wider context. >any link between how people are described in >the parish register and their settlement status. a careful clergyman would have to think of this. Melford was a fairly rich parish (till the early 1800s,) of course, -- Eve McLaughlin Author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians Secretary Bucks Genealogical Society