Marriage Challenge and Andover

A discussion on Marriage Challenges on the Discussion Forum for the Guild of One Name Studies led to an interesting discovery on my part. I could assist with a Marriage Challenge by extracting the marriages that I have at the parishes in the Andover Registration District - Andover, Abbots Ann, Upper Clatford, Goodworth Clatford, and Penton Mewsey. Not sure how many of the smaller parishes that I have marriages from 1837 to the present but will check on that. I need to set up the Cardinal Points so will work away at that and then I can set up an excel file and work away at that a bit each day.

I am now up to 5108 baptisms and just three pages left on the first fiche. There are three fiches for this time period (1642 - 1684) for the baptisms, marriages and burials. My excel file includes the fiche #, line # and image # to make finding the information again quite easy.

I had decided to resign from all of the county historical societies and other groups to which I have belonged for about five or six years and more in some cases except for the Guild of One Name Studies and I received an Exit Survey back for one of the organizations. It will be difficult to fill in because I resigned mostly because I was getting overloaded with journals and I simply couldn't read them all. Now I am in the mode of deciding which journals I found most beneficial to my work and that I consistently would read other than the Guild Journal. Leaving the Guild was too awkward which was the main reason for not retrenching completely!

I mostly blame it on being able to trace most of my lines and back quite a way. Having gotten back into the 1700s with all of them and further back for a number of them, I simply do not have enough hours in the day to do research. I need to make a decision on what I want to thoroughly research and what I will leave for someone else in the future if I am so lucky as to have someone pick all of this up :)

From what I understand though Cardinal Points are the first and last marriage in a quarter for each contributing institution (churches, court houses perhaps and licensed agencies). I do not know how marriages work in England outside of Churches. I am also noticing that each institution has a page of their own in the county registry office - for instance St Mary Abbotts Ann was page 37 and St Marys Andover was page 39 and all marriages are recorded on these pages in date order - all four marriages for Andover 3rd quarter 1837 were listed for page 39 in Free BMD. The single marriage for Abbotts Ann was listed. There were five other numbers 41, 43, 45, 47 and 49. Since Ludgershall would probably have at least as many marriages as Andover they are probably the second large one. Interestingly this Registration District crosses into Wiltshire. Since these numbers appear fixed it should be possible to determine which pages belong to which parishes and I shall see if I can figure that out as I have a number of Parishes that are in Andover RD.

Andover RD

Abbotts Ann St Mary
Amport St Mary
Andover St Mary
Appleshaw St Peter
Barton Stacey All Saints
Bullington St Michael
Chilbolton St Mary
Chute
Chute Forest
Faccombe St Barnabas
Foxcott
Fyfield St Nicholas
Goodworth Clatford St Peter
Grateley St Leonard
Hurstbourne Tarrant St Peter
Kimpton St Peter and St Paul
Knights Enham St Michael the Archangel
Linkenholt St Peter
Longparish St Nicholas
Ludgershall
Monxton St Mary
North Tidworth
Penton Grafton
Penton Mewsey Holy Trinity
Quarley St Michael
Shipton Bellinger St Peter
Smannell
South Tedworth Old St Mary
Tangley St Thomas
Thruxton St Peter
Upper Clatford All Saints
Vernhams Dean St Mary
Wherwell St Peter

I have the fiche for: Abbotts Ann, Andover, Goodworth Clatford, Kimpton, Knights Enham, Penton Mewsey and Upper Clatford. However, I do not always have the marriages from 1837 to 1912 for all of these parishes. I purchased them to look at the Blake families there and I wasn't interested past 1812 in most cases and not after 1750 for many of them although I did buy them into the 1800s.

I can trace my Blake line clearly back to the 1600s so did not have a strong need for the parish records into the 1800s.