Thanks Margery, So there would not have been any records of non-conformist marriages prior to 1834 if they wanted to marry regularly. I had wondered if some non-conformists might have opted for an irregular marriage rather than marry according to the rites of the established Church of Scotland which was an anathema to them. In these cases I had considered the possibility of a non-conformist minister acting as witness and recording the event as evidence. ( Jo Ann wrote on 22 August "Under early modern Scots law, there were three forms of "irregular marriage" which can be summarised as the agreement of the couple to be married and some form of witnessing or evidence of such....") I had hoped there would be records of these events, albeit unofficial or illegal, held by individual non-conformist churches or sent to their synod. Or in the National Archives. However, since no one appears to have seen any of these records, it sounds like the non-conformist minister did not get involved in irregular marriages nor record the events. I appreciate your help with this. Ailsa ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------- Irregular Marriages & Non-Conformist Records According to information on the GRO Scotland website - it wasn't until 1834, when a "Marriage (Scotland) Act" was passed - that ministers & priests "not of the established church" were permitted to conduct legal marriage ceremonies. This would indicate to me that prior to 1834 marriage ceremonies were not conducted in non-conformist churches. Couples who were of non-conformist persuasions who wished to have a "regular" marriage ceremony would have had to be married (not necessarily in church - marriages were often held in the home of the bride) by a minister of the established Church of Scotland. So to answer your question Ailsa, it would seem that there are no non-conformist church marriage records prior to 1834. This digest arrangement scares me silly - I hope I've done this reply correctly! Margery Edmonds ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sun, 25 Aug 2013 18:42:56 +1000 From: "ailsa158" <ailsa158@optusnet.com.au> Subject: Re: [WIG LIST] Irregular Marriages SCT-WIGTOWNSHIRE Digest, Vol 8, Issue 121 To: <sct-wigtownshire@rootsweb.com> Message-ID: <000301cea16f$1c09d010$541d7030$@optusnet.com.au> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to explain Irregular marriages. It has always confused me. >From reading the discussion, it would appear that non-conformists who married in their own churches pre 1834 were considered to be in Irregular marriages. Is that correct? If so, where would these marriage records be held? Regards, Ailsa ------------------------------ To contact the SCT-WIGTOWNSHIRE list administrator, send an email to SCT-WIGTOWNSHIRE-admin@rootsweb.com. To post a message to the SCT-WIGTOWNSHIRE mailing list, send an email to SCT-WIGTOWNSHIRE@rootsweb.com. __________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to SCT-WIGTOWNSHIRE-request@rootsweb.com with the word "unsubscribe" without the quotes in the subject and the body of the email with no additional text. End of SCT-WIGTOWNSHIRE Digest, Vol 8, Issue 122 ************************************************ ------------------------------ To contact the SCT-WIGTOWNSHIRE list administrator, send an email to SCT-WIGTOWNSHIRE-admin@rootsweb.com. To post a message to the SCT-WIGTOWNSHIRE mailing list, send an email to SCT-WIGTOWNSHIRE@rootsweb.com. __________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to SCT-WIGTOWNSHIRE-request@rootsweb.com with the word "unsubscribe" without the quotes in the subject and the body of the email with no additional text. End of SCT-WIGTOWNSHIRE Digest, Vol 8, Issue 125 ************************************************