If you are not getting a photocopy of the marriage certificate from the local register office then you should ask for one in your application. Sometimes, local offices write them out themselves instead of photocopying the entry. All marriage certificates held in the local offices are originals. I have certificates dating from 1837 to present day with all but a couple with the original signatures. All different writing as can be seen, sometimes, in the painstaking scrawl of someone trying very hard to prove that they can write their own name. The only ones where all the writing is the same is where the local office has not bothered to photocopy the original. Perhaps I am lucky in that the majority of my certificates come from Yorkshire but I do have others as well. If you think the local office does not have the originals, who do you think does have them? Kind regards Judith Brenda <ellis-b@sky.com> wrote: Hello I have had many copies of certificates from the local Registry Office, but I would like to point out, that in the case of marriage certificates, it is not always your ancestor's signature. The certificates were copied by the parish clerk & sent to the registry offices, & it could be copies of these that are sent to you. If you look at the signatures on the certificates, you can see that sometimes they are all in the same writing. I have proof of this with one particular certificate, where the surname was spelt wrong. My grandparents just didn't spell their name this way. However an advantage of sending to a local registry office is, they don't send you a certificate if all your details don't match. Thus saving you wasting your money. Regards Brenda p.s. My own marriage certificate is a copy, the only original signatures are that of the two witnesses. ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to WEST-RIDING-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Hello Judith I was talking about the Parish Register which is kept in the church. In a book I have on this subject, it states that the parish clerk made a copy to send to the registry office. If you are lucky you will get a copy from the parish register, but otherwise you will get the copy the parish clerk wrote out. In my own case, my signature & that of my husband is in the Church's register. The copy we were given to keep had been written out previously, with our signatures copied & only the two witnesses signed again. Regards Brenda

Hello Judith I do assure you that this is what happened in our case, re the marriage certificate. We were married in 1964 at a village church in Leicestershire. We all signed the Parish Register which is kept in the church. Then we were then given a copy to keep, this had already been written out with our names on the signature line, but not the witnesses names. My Dad & best man, as the two witnesses, both signed this. I have looked again at the certificate to make sure. All the writing except for Dad's & the Best Man, is the same. I presume that when the Parish Register was filled up, the church would then pass this on to the Record Office for Leicestershire. I've never tried to get a copy. Regards Brenda