This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Author: BruceMcDowall27 Surnames: Classification: queries Message Board URL: http://boards.rootsweb.com/localities.britisles.scotland.wig.general/2163.1.1.1/mb.ashx Message Board Post: Hi twinkletoes, In Don Gillies' excellent advice, he mentioned the old parish registers, (OPRs), held in Edinburgh and available online through Scotlandspeople. The current holding body is National Records of Scotland. These records have been filmed by the LDS and can be accesses at LDS Family history Centres and some genealogy libraries. I have access to some of these, including the parish of Portpatrick. A couple of the advantages in trawling the film, rather than using Scotlandspeople, are perspective and deciphering challenging handwriting. One can occasionally find records which have been omitted from or incorrectly transcribed into the index. Maybe this thought was behind your original lookup request. You mention a few Ancestry members claiming the same marriage place and year. That doesn't necessarily account for much. Often, a stated event or connection is contributed to Ancestry which is not based on reliable primary sources. If other researchers take that contribution as fact and submit it as part of their own contribution, it can appear that there are a number of sources. I guess that you have looked at the IGI and found some similar contributed information there. Perhaps this is due to one or more of the same people contributing to both Family Search and Ancestry.com. That marriage date may have been an assumption, or it may have been from a subsequent baptism record which the original contributor has. I would have thought that if it was from an OPR marriage record or a family bible, the precise date would have been available, rather than just the year. In theory, the IGI should give a good idea of what is included in the Portpatrick OPR film, as the vast majority of OPRs have been extracted to the IGI. The catch is that a couple of years ago, the LDS revamped the IGI database and search engine, and although this has improved some features, it has made some searches more difficult. I won't elaborate fully here, but one of the steps was an attempt to reduce duplication, which resulted in removal of many extracts sourced directly from the OPRs. The upshot is that this can require considerable trawling of the film to determine if the record you seek is there or not. I have looked at the Portpatrick marriage and baptism registers. Over the period when your Mary ALEXANDER was born and married, John Mackenzie D.D. was the minister. He was busily marrying couples from Ireland. Meanwhile, across the Irish Sea in Donaghadee, Scottish couples were being married. Review and confirmation of many of the latter appear in the Portpatrick register. The baptism register has some marriage records and the marriage register some baptisms, which complicates trawling somewhat, but some very interesting entries along the way makes this task worth while. I did not find a record of the marriage of Mary ALEXANDER to Bernard MOONEY. I did find what I believe to be the baptism record of Mary: "Mary Daughter to John Alexander & Margaret Kelly in Town of Portpatrick was born the fifth and Baptized the sixth December one thousand eight hundred and six years" I assume that you know from her NSW death registration that Mary's father was William, not John, but I think there is good reason to believe that the Session Clerk made an error with this entry. I would normally favour the possibility that this was another couple, but considering the 1803 marriage of William ALEXANDER & Margaret KELLY, and the timing of births of their other children, this Mary fits nicely. There was a John ALEXANDER who married Margaret McCORMICK in 1800, and they were having children in the parish during this period. They also had a daughter Mary, born 18 March, baptized 19 March, 1805. This couple also lived in the town, so it is easy to believe that the Session clerk got them confused. Note that this confusion is speculation based on circumstances. The Portpatrick marriage record of William ALEXANDER & Margaret KELLY is both interesting and informative: "Portpatrick 10th April 1803 William Alexander produced Certificate of Marriage of him the said William Alexander and Margaret Kelly dated at Milsile in Ireland upon the fifteenth day of January One Thousand Eight Hundred and Three years signed by the Revd Alexr Grees Minr of Milslile which Certificate the Session This day Sustained." The session clerk confounded the spelling and names a little. This had to be Millisle Presbyterian Church, of which Andrew Greer was minister from 1777 to 1809. Millisle is in county down, about 3 miles or 5 km south of Donaghadee. Regards, Bruce p.s. If you haven't already checked out the Trove website, you should be interested in some mentions of Bernard MOONEY in a couple of Hunter Valley newspapers. Important Note: The author of this message may not be subscribed to this list. If you would like to reply to them, please click on the Message Board URL link above and respond on the board.