The replies to date have touched upon most of the reasons for apparently unrecorded marriages, but perhaps do not convey an overall impression. I believe for the two decades or so before compulsory registration 1855 the most common cause of omission from the Church of Scotland registers (and hence from the indexes of Scotlandspeople, IGI, Walt Cusiter and Mike Bostwick) was the fragmentation of the church in Scotland. In 1854 the Church of Scotland had 22 congregations in Orkney but there were another 40 or so other congregations! Within each parish all these congregations used the same burial ground, and some dissenting congregations used the Church of Scotland registers, but many did not. Pre-1855 dissenting/free church registers survive for Firth, Harray, Kirkwall/St.Ola, N.Ronaldsay, Orphir, St.Andrews, Sanday, Sandwick, S.Ronaldsay, Stromness and Stronsay. These registers are held in The Orkney Archive, and microfilms in the National Archive. Before the 1830s the most common cause of non-recording, real or apparent, was that many registers were defective, i.e. ceremonies took place but were not recorded (we can see this from the gaps and non-consecutive features of the registers), and many earlier registers have been lost. But records of some marriages, and contracts for marriage, do survive in the Kirk Session minutes and in the Sheriff Court Records. More details in my book "Trace Your Orkney Ancestors"! James Irvine > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Robert SLATER > To: ORKNEY@rootsweb.com > Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2008 6:56 PM > Subject: [ORKNEY] Marriage by "Habit and Repute" > > > I seem to be having a very bad run in attempting to locate Orkney > marriages > in the period 1750 to 1850 in the Old Parish Records. At the moment I > am > scoring well below 50%, and probably below 25%, even of those for whom > later > records (of baptisms) indicate that the parents were married. > > Is this a case of lost records, although the gaps are not apparent, > > just bad record keeping, although the baptisms seem to be much better, or > > were there just a high percentage of marriages by habit and repute? > > Robert Slater > >