OFHS Search Service - Hints and Tips

SEARCH SERVICE INDEXES
What is the Search Service for? The Search Service is a finding aid. It is not intended as a complete research tool to provide your entire Oxfordshire family history "on a plate". The search service indexes are computerised indexes, into transcriptions of original documents such as parish registers and censuses. Whilst we strive to make these indexes as accurate as possible, some errors or mis-readings are likely to creep in. Just using the search service is no substitute for studying the complete transcripts which in turn is not a substitute for viewing the original documents. What date range do the parish indexes cover? Parish registers started in 1538 but not all records from this date have survived. The indexes cover from the earliest available records for a parish up until 1851, in the case of baptisms, burials, and North Berkshire marriages. (This date was chosen to give an overlap to the 1851 census, which was the first to record places-of-birth.) The older Oxfordshire Marriage Index currently ends in 1837, (chosen to coincide with the start of civil registration). The Parish Data Map on this web site, described below includes detail pages showing the search index coverage graphically. This makes it easy to see where there are gaps in the coverage. Are the indexes complete? Both the baptism and burial indexes are still being extended. At the time of writing (2009) around 90% of parishes are included. How do I tell which parishes are included? The Parish Data Map on this web site, shows which indexes are available for any parish. Click the Details button to see exactly which years are included for a given parish. Where do I go from here? If the search service has found that elusive missing ancestor and shown you where he/she was living, the next step is to get the transcribed parish register for that parish and piece together all the other relatives from the same parish. Then view some original records, hunt for family wills and if possible visit the parish. Above all, have fun!

SOME GENERAL POINTS
That's not my ancestor. He spelt his name differently! Most folk could neither read nor write until the latter part of the 19th century. Before this time the spellings which appear in parish registers were the vicar's or parish clerk's spelling of a name he had been told. So you will often find two branches of the same family in neighbouring parishes apparently using a different spelling. and may find spellings changing in the same parish when a new vicar or clerk is appointed. Unless otherwise requested we will normally try to include all likely spelling variants when carrying out searches. That's not my ancestor. His age is wrong! An age is not an easy thing to remember. It keeps changing every year! Nowadays we are used to knowing our date of birth, since we so frequently get asked for it on various forms. So calculating our age is a simple matter of subtraction. Our ancestors were not plagued with frequent requests for their date of birth, and even if they knew this, subtracting it from the current year to get an age, would be beyond their powers of arithmetic. So when asked their age, they guessed, based on how old they "felt", and often got it wrong. In such cases you usually find a slowly accumulating error. Another source of "error" can arise when an ancestor marries. Here you can find a sudden step-change in age, where clearly one party has deliberately lied about their age to their prospective partner. Usually this happens when there is a significant age difference between the partners. Each will tend to lie to bring their claimed age nearer to that of their partner. Ages recorded in burial registers for adults, are particularly unreliable. The person who would have been most likely to know the true age is now deceased, so the age written in the register may be no more than a guess on the part of the parish clerk. The Calendar: What convention do you use? The present-day Gregorian calendar, in which the new year starts on 1st January, was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1538. Prior to that, the Christian world used the Julian calender in which the new year started on Ladyday, 25th March. Britian, in common with many other protestant countries, was initially unwilling to adopt this "papish change". It was only in 1752, following Lord Chesterfield's Act that Britain officially adopted the Gregorian calendar and this was the first year in which New Year's day fell on 1st January. (In the same year the 11 days from 3rd to 13th September were omitted, to correct for the accumulated errors of the Julian calendar). What does this mean for family historians? After 1752 there is no problem. Prior to this date, the days between 1st January and 24th March would count as one year in the Julian calendar and a different year in the Gregorian calendar, so there is scope for confusion. Although the official changeover happened in 1752, it was already apparent that the new calendar was more sensible, so in some parish registers you will find the new calendar in use before 1752. In some cases just a single year will be given, but it is obvious from the sequence in the register that the year number is being changed on 1st January. In other cases both forms of the date will be shown, most often in the form "1749/50", for dates between 1st January and 24th March. You will also occasionally find such dual dates appearing on tomb stones, as in the example shown here, commemorating William Cottle of Oriel College, who died in his 19th year and was buried at St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, on 5th January 1714/15. In transcripts it is normally easy to tell what convention a particular register is using from the context. In our search indexes that context is lost. Moreover it is not easy to display a dual year within the results. The year field is expected to contain exactly four digits. Moreover attempts to select and sort by date do not understand dual years and are apt to treat 1749/50 as a division sum and show the result as 34.98 which is not at all what was intended! In preparing the indexes we generally use the first four digits of the date as written in the original register. So if the parish is working on Julian dates, it will be the Julian year that appears in the index. If the parish has already adopted Gregorian dates before 1752, the index will show the Gregorian date. If the parish is using dual dates, just the first four digits will appear in the index, which is effectively the Julian date. This is what you will see in an index listing. So there will occasionaly be scope for a one year error, in cases where a parish has adopted the Gregorian calendar in advance of the official start date. The important thing to remember is the point made in the very first paragraph of these "Hints & Tips", that the Search Service is intended as a finding aid, not a complete source of all data. Of course, if you have requested a specific search for a single person, the problem does not arise, since we then supply the full details from the transcript, including dual year dates where appropriate. The Effects of the Stamp Duty Act of 1783 In 1783 the British government passed a stamp duty act to help pay for the American War of Independence. In particular a tax of 3d was to be paid on every entry in a parish register. The incumbent was empowered to collect this tax and entitled to keep a small proportion for his trouble. However paupers were exempt from paying the tax. The tax was deeply unpopular and was finally repealed in 1794. There was little people could do about burial entries. The dead had still to be buried. It is possible that the act led to an increased number of so-called "common law marriages" (see below). However it is in baptisms that the consequences of the act are most visible to the family historian. Here the act had two effects. Some couples simply did not bother to baptise their children, so you are more likely to encounter "missing baptisms" whilst the act was in force. Some of these children may be found being baptised "in a batch" after 1794 but in other cases baptisms are never recorded for them. (My personal suspicion is that religious beliefs were satisfied by a surreptitious splash of Holy water, but no register entry was every made.) The other effect, seen in some parishes where the incumbent was clearly on the side of his parishioners rather than the government at Westminster, is that whilst the act was in force, a large number of entries in the register are recorded as being the children of "paupers". (At Leafield for example between April 1787 and November 1790, of 59 baptisms, all but 8 were for "paupers". The practice stops suddenly at this point. Presumably the government noticed!) So if you find your ancestor baptised as a pauper during this period, do not shed too many tears for the family's plight. They were probably not in penury, they just had an obliging vicar!

SOME GENERAL POINTS

That's not my ancestor. He spelt his name differently!
Most folk could neither read nor write until the latter part of the 19th century. Before this time the spellings which appear in parish registers were the vicar's or parish clerk's spelling of a name he had been told. So you will often find two branches of the same family in neighbouring parishes apparently using a different spelling. and may find spellings changing in the same parish when a new vicar or clerk is appointed. Unless otherwise requested we will normally try to include all likely spelling variants when carrying out searches.

That's not my ancestor. His age is wrong!
An age is not an easy thing to remember. It keeps changing every year! Nowadays we are used to knowing our date of birth, since we so frequently get asked for it on various forms. So calculating our age is a simple matter of subtraction. Our ancestors were not plagued with frequent requests for their date of birth, and even if they knew this, subtracting it from the current year to get an age, would be beyond their powers of arithmetic. So when asked their age, they guessed, based on how old they "felt", and often got it wrong. In such cases you usually find a slowly accumulating error. Another source of "error" can arise when an ancestor marries. Here you can find a sudden step-change in age, where clearly one party has deliberately lied about their age to their prospective partner. Usually this happens when there is a significant age difference between the partners. Each will tend to lie to bring their claimed age nearer to that of their partner.
Ages recorded in burial registers for adults, are particularly unreliable. The person who would have been most likely to know the true age is now deceased, so the age written in the register may be no more than a guess on the part of the parish clerk.

The Calendar: What convention do you use?
The present-day Gregorian calendar, in which the new year starts on 1st January, was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1538. Prior to that, the Christian world used the Julian calender in which the new year started on Ladyday, 25th March. Britian, in common with many other protestant countries, was initially unwilling to adopt this "papish change". It was only in 1752, following Lord Chesterfield's Act that Britain officially adopted the Gregorian calendar and this was the first year in which New Year's day fell on 1st January. (In the same year the 11 days from 3rd to 13th September were omitted, to correct for the accumulated errors of the Julian calendar).

Memorial for 1714/15 What does this mean for family historians? After 1752 there is no problem. Prior to this date, the days between 1st January and 24th March would count as one year in the Julian calendar and a different year in the Gregorian calendar, so there is scope for confusion. Although the official changeover happened in 1752, it was already apparent that the new calendar was more sensible, so in some parish registers you will find the new calendar in use before 1752. In some cases just a single year will be given, but it is obvious from the sequence in the register that the year number is being changed on 1st January. In other cases both forms of the date will be shown, most often in the form "1749/50", for dates between 1st January and 24th March. You will also occasionally find such dual dates appearing on tomb stones, as in the example shown here, commemorating William Cottle of Oriel College, who died in his 19th year and was buried at St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, on 5th January 1714/15.

In transcripts it is normally easy to tell what convention a particular register is using from the context. In our search indexes that context is lost. Moreover it is not easy to display a dual year within the results. The year field is expected to contain exactly four digits. Moreover attempts to select and sort by date do not understand dual years and are apt to treat 1749/50 as a division sum and show the result as 34.98 which is not at all what was intended! In preparing the indexes we generally use the first four digits of the date as written in the original register. So if the parish is working on Julian dates, it will be the Julian year that appears in the index. If the parish has already adopted Gregorian dates before 1752, the index will show the Gregorian date. If the parish is using dual dates, just the first four digits will appear in the index, which is effectively the Julian date. This is what you will see in an index listing. So there will occasionaly be scope for a one year error, in cases where a parish has adopted the Gregorian calendar in advance of the official start date. The important thing to remember is the point made in the very first paragraph of these "Hints & Tips", that the Search Service is intended as a finding aid, not a complete source of all data. Of course, if you have requested a specific search for a single person, the problem does not arise, since we then supply the full details from the transcript, including dual year dates where appropriate.

The Effects of the Stamp Duty Act of 1783
In 1783 the British government passed a stamp duty act to help pay for the American War of Independence. In particular a tax of 3d was to be paid on every entry in a parish register. The incumbent was empowered to collect this tax and entitled to keep a small proportion for his trouble. However paupers were exempt from paying the tax. The tax was deeply unpopular and was finally repealed in 1794.

There was little people could do about burial entries. The dead had still to be buried. It is possible that the act led to an increased number of so-called "common law marriages" (see below). However it is in baptisms that the consequences of the act are most visible to the family historian. Here the act had two effects. Some couples simply did not bother to baptise their children, so you are more likely to encounter "missing baptisms" whilst the act was in force. Some of these children may be found being baptised "in a batch" after 1794 but in other cases baptisms are never recorded for them. (My personal suspicion is that religious beliefs were satisfied by a surreptitious splash of Holy water, but no register entry was every made.) The other effect, seen in some parishes where the incumbent was clearly on the side of his parishioners rather than the government at Westminster, is that whilst the act was in force, a large number of entries in the register are recorded as being the children of "paupers". (At Leafield for example between April 1787 and November 1790, of 59 baptisms, all but 8 were for "paupers". The practice stops suddenly at this point. Presumably the government noticed!) So if you find your ancestor baptised as a pauper during this period, do not shed too many tears for the family's plight. They were probably not in penury, they just had an obliging vicar!

BAPTISMS
Why were infants baptised? Infant baptism is an established practice in the Anglican church. The prevailing view up to the end of the 19th century was that a person who died unbaptised, could not gain entry to the Kingdom of Heaven. Thus it was important to be baptised as early in life as possible. Most commonly you will find a baptism occurring during the first month of life. Why are some baptisms recorded as "privately"? If a new-born infant was sickly and thought unlikely to survive, its fate in Heaven required it to be baptised urgently. So any available clergyman was persuaded to attend the family home and baptise the child there, and hence the baptism was done "privately" and recorded as such. If the child recovered it would often be baptised publicly later and you may sometimes find "brought to church" with a date, added beside the original entry, or as a separate entry in the register. However this was not always done, nor recorded. So you should not automatically assume the absence of a "brought to church" entry indicates that the child died. Another aspect of private baptisms was that it was not always possible to locate the local incumbent at short notice, so a clergyman from a neighbouring parish might be called upon. In which case he would quite often record the baptism in his own register, rather than the one for the parish where the parents lived. Was everyone baptised as a baby? Not necessarily. If the parents were not firm believers in infant baptism, a child might go unbaptised, or be baptised later in life. Often there will be a note in the parish register indicating the age for such non-infant baptisms but this is not always the case, so you should not automatically assume the baptismal date is close to the birth bate. You will sometimes find cases where several siblings were all baptised at the same time "in a batch". Often this can be the result of pressure being applied to the parents and you will occasionally find cases where several such batch baptisms take place in a parish over a period of a few months. This usually indicates that a new, keen incumbent has taken over the parish and is busy rounding up his stray sheep! Missing baptisms are particularly prevalent between 1783 and 1794, whilst stamp duty was levied on register entries, for reasons explained above. Why was first child baptised away from home? You will often find cases where the first child of a marriage is baptised in a different parish from the later children. The explanation is that a young bride often went home to her mother for the birth of her first child, with mother acting as midwife. So the child's baptism can be a pointer to the parish where the bride came from (and can also imply that the maternal grandmother was still alive at the time of the birth).

BAPTISMS

Why were infants baptised?
Infant baptism is an established practice in the Anglican church. The prevailing view up to the end of the 19th century was that a person who died unbaptised, could not gain entry to the Kingdom of Heaven. Thus it was important to be baptised as early in life as possible. Most commonly you will find a baptism occurring during the first month of life.

Why are some baptisms recorded as "privately"?
If a new-born infant was sickly and thought unlikely to survive, its fate in Heaven required it to be baptised urgently. So any available clergyman was persuaded to attend the family home and baptise the child there, and hence the baptism was done "privately" and recorded as such. If the child recovered it would often be baptised publicly later and you may sometimes find "brought to church" with a date, added beside the original entry, or as a separate entry in the register. However this was not always done, nor recorded. So you should not automatically assume the absence of a "brought to church" entry indicates that the child died. Another aspect of private baptisms was that it was not always possible to locate the local incumbent at short notice, so a clergyman from a neighbouring parish might be called upon. In which case he would quite often record the baptism in his own register, rather than the one for the parish where the parents lived.

Was everyone baptised as a baby?
Not necessarily. If the parents were not firm believers in infant baptism, a child might go unbaptised, or be baptised later in life. Often there will be a note in the parish register indicating the age for such non-infant baptisms but this is not always the case, so you should not automatically assume the baptismal date is close to the birth bate. You will sometimes find cases where several siblings were all baptised at the same time "in a batch". Often this can be the result of pressure being applied to the parents and you will occasionally find cases where several such batch baptisms take place in a parish over a period of a few months. This usually indicates that a new, keen incumbent has taken over the parish and is busy rounding up his stray sheep! Missing baptisms are particularly prevalent between 1783 and 1794, whilst stamp duty was levied on register entries, for reasons explained above.

Why was first child baptised away from home?
You will often find cases where the first child of a marriage is baptised in a different parish from the later children. The explanation is that a young bride often went home to her mother for the birth of her first child, with mother acting as midwife. So the child's baptism can be a pointer to the parish where the bride came from (and can also imply that the maternal grandmother was still alive at the time of the birth).

MARRIAGES
Where did a marriage take place? Most commonly in the parish where the bride's family lived at the time of the wedding, but sometimes in the parish where the bride and/or groom was living, if they were no longer living at home or the bride's parents were dead. (Marriages in the City of Oxford are a special case discussed below.) Does "of the parish of ..." tell you where they were born? No. This is a common mis-conception. This column in a marriage register entry specifically indicates the parish where the person was living for the 3 weeks prior to the marriage and hence where his or her banns were read. The abbreviation "o.t.p." meaning "of this parish" is used when the person was living in the parish where the marriage took place. Since this is the default situation, many transcripts will leave this column blank for this situation rather than entering "o.t.p." every time. This same convention is used in the OFHS marriage indexes. Note however that an o.t.p. entry is not always to be trusted. If the bride and groom lived in different parishes, the law required that banns were read at both churches. Since a fee was charged for reading banns, this doubled the cost. So many prospective grooms would notionally be lodging in the bride's parish, (e.g. by leaving a suitcase of clothes at a friendly neighbour's house) for the period prior to the wedding. Hence the groom would be o.t.p. and only one set of banns would be read. (Marriages in the City of Oxford are also a special case discussed below.) Why can't I find their marriage? They may have married outside the county, or a record may have been lost, but by far the most likely explanation is simply that they never formally married! Such informal marriages, often (but inaccurately) called "common-law marriages" were quite common and carried no stigma. Church weddings were expensive and unlike the situation for baptisms described above, there was no strong theological reason for a church wedding. So you will find many instances of families with firm religious beliefs, who conscientiously baptised their children but never married in church. Surely everyone married in church after Lord Hardwicke's marriage act of 1753? It is a common fallacy that Lord Hardwicke's act was about protecting the morality of the nation and ensuring that everyone was "properly married". This is not true. The act was not about morality, it was mostly about money! The act was precipitated by a case finally resolved in the House of Lords in 1753, which had been under way since 1746, following the death of Captain John Campbell, of Carrick, who was killed at the battle of Fontenoy in 1745. Captain Campbell had been irregularly married in 1724 and 1725 to two different women, who were subsequently disputing rights to his property and a widow's pension. (You can read all about it at http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/17.1/leneman.html In rural Oxfordshire such property disputes were of no great significance and irregular marriages continued until the advent of "Victorian morality" towards the end of the 19th century. Such marriages were not legally valid, but if you were an impoverished Ag. Lab. the legal status of your marriage was of no great consequence. Why did they marry in the City of Oxford when they lived in the country? It is quite common to find a couple, often both from the same parish, who marry in an Oxford City parish, then apparently return home to live and raise and baptise a family. Were they temporarily living in Oxford? Almost always the answer is no. Did they marry in Oxford to be "posh". Again the answer is usually no. Most often they were Ag. Labs. with no such illusions of grandeur. The real answer is more prosaic and peculiar to Oxford, where many of the academics were clerics, who would supplement their finances with an incumbency of one of the surrounding rural parishes. This required them to be present in their parish on Sundays to conduct services but they spent the rest of the week in the city. So some were reluctant to "traipse all the way out into the sticks", on other days of the week to marry a couple. How much easier to "borrow" a city church and persuade the couple to come into town? The result is a wedding in one of the city parishes, of which St Mary Magdalen seems to have been the most popular. Sometimes the register will record both partners as being "sojourners" in the parish but quite often they are recorded as being o.t.p. The rationale seems to be that as far as the person conducting the service was concerned, they were his parishioners and he had personally read their banns (in their own local church), on the preceding Sundays. What is marriage by banns? A forthcoming marriage had to be announced in the parish churches of both bride and groom by the reading of Banns as part of the main Sunday Service on three Sundays preceding the marriage. This gave anyone believing the proposed marriage to be unlawful, the opportunity to object. A fee was charged for the reading of banns, so there was some incentive for both parties to a marriage claiming to be from the same parish, so one set of banns would suffice, even if this was not strictly the case. The reading of banns was usually recorded in a book, separately from the main marriage register and some of these Banns Books have survived. They can be a useful aid to finding a "missing" marriage. OFHS parish register transcripts usually incorporate details from any surviving banns books, for cases where the marriage took place in a different parish. However there are no search indexes into these banns transcripts and you will need to view the actual transcript to see if they exist. What is marriage by licence? As an alternative to the reading of banns, it was possible to marry by licence. This offered a quicker route, with no need to wait three Sundays for the reading of banns. It also permitted a marriage in a parish in which neither bride nor groom were resident. Finally, because it required access to a source of money, it conferred social status. A marriage by licence involved three documents: The actual licence was given to the officiating minister and it was his authority to proceed with the wedding. They were rarely kept after the wedding, so few have survived. The allegation was a signed statement usually by the groom, that the proposed marriage was legal. The bond was a signed promise by someone that if the marriage was subsequently found to be illegal, he would forfeit a specified sum of money (most often "One hundred pounds of good English money"). This meant that the person signing the bond had to be someone deemed worthy of fulfilling this obligation should the need arise. The allegations and bonds were normally kept and many have now found their way to local record offices, in our case the Oxfordshire Record Office. (You will often find them colloquially referred to as a "marriage licence") Transcribed marriage registers will normally indicate when a marriage was by licence, so when providing details for a specific marriage as part of the Search Service, we will include that information. You will need to contact the record office directly to confirm whether the bond or allegation have survived and if so to obtain details of these. What is marriage by registrar's certificate? Occasionally a marriage register may show that a marriage after 1837 was by "Registrar's Certificate" rather than by banns or by licence. In effect this is the secular equivalent of banns. A notice is posted on a public notice board in the bride's and groom's registration district(s) for three weeks prior to the wedding showing their intention to marry. Like banns, this is intended to give anyone believing the proposed marriage to be unlawful, the opportunity to object. It was no quicker or cheaper than banns, so to the family historian it is most often a pointer that one or both parties was non-conformist and so did not want banns read out as part of an Anglican church service. The marriage had still to take place in premises licensed for the purpose, so before the days of established register office weddings, it may still take place in the local parish church, and so appear in the parish marriage register. Who are the witnesses? Following the implementation of Hardwicke's marriage act in 1754, all marriage register entries should include the signature of two witnesses to the marriage. We have no search service index into witness names but when providing full details of a marriage as the result of a search, we will include the witness names. Sometimes these will be other family members and so can provide useful extra evidence for the family historian. Quite often one finds one witness name being repeated for many marriages around the same time. This will normally imply that this person is the parish clerk. Where this is apparent, we will normally mention it when providing details for the marriage. If you have purchased parish register transcripts, it is worth while to look at all the other marriages in the parish for a few years either side of the marriage you are interested in. You will quite often find one or both of "your" couple acting as witnesses for their friends or relatives who married about the same time. Why do some names have an "x" beside them? In the marriage register, the bride and groom and the two witnesses were all required to sign their names. If they were unable to write, they marked a cross and the clerk noted the name alongside this. When transcribing registers we conventionally mark this with an "x" in brackets beside the name. They left it a bit late didn't they? There is a tendency nowadays to regard the "permissive society" as a modern invention and to assume that the strict urban Victorian morality of "no sex before marriage" was the norm for all time before that. This was certainly not the case for rural communities such as most of Oxfordshire, up to the end of the 19th century. If anything, the motto was "try before you buy!". The ability to produce children was crucial to a rural family. They were the people who you hoped would look after you in your old age. So if a couple planning marriage were unable to conceive a child, the marriage would probably not take place. Hence it is quite common to find the first child being born appreciably less than 9 months after the marriage. At what age was it legal to marry? In the UK, the Age of Marriage Act of 1929, specified a minimum age of 16 for a person to marry (with the consent of their parents). Prior to that a girl could marry at age 12 and a boy at age 14. However that does not mean that marriage at such a young age was common. It was in fact extrememly rare. For example in 1871, in the whole of England and Wales there were only 35 marriages in which the bride was under 16. (i.e. less than 0.02% of all marriages). (Source is from ONS web site.) Do marriage records include details of occupation and parents? After 1837 the record will include occupations for the bride and groom, together with the names of their fathers, and the fathers' occupations. Often the record will also indicate if the father is deceased. Before 1837 none of this information is recorded. Our search index entries do not include this information for any marriages, but if a detailed search for a specific marriage is requested we will automatically provide this information where it is available.

MARRIAGES

Where did a marriage take place?
Most commonly in the parish where the bride's family lived at the time of the wedding, but sometimes in the parish where the bride and/or groom was living, if they were no longer living at home or the bride's parents were dead. (Marriages in the City of Oxford are a special case discussed below.)

Does "of the parish of ..." tell you where they were born?
No. This is a common mis-conception. This column in a marriage register entry specifically indicates the parish where the person was living for the 3 weeks prior to the marriage and hence where his or her banns were read. The abbreviation "o.t.p." meaning "of this parish" is used when the person was living in the parish where the marriage took place. Since this is the default situation, many transcripts will leave this column blank for this situation rather than entering "o.t.p." every time. This same convention is used in the OFHS marriage indexes. Note however that an o.t.p. entry is not always to be trusted. If the bride and groom lived in different parishes, the law required that banns were read at both churches. Since a fee was charged for reading banns, this doubled the cost. So many prospective grooms would notionally be lodging in the bride's parish, (e.g. by leaving a suitcase of clothes at a friendly neighbour's house) for the period prior to the wedding. Hence the groom would be o.t.p. and only one set of banns would be read. (Marriages in the City of Oxford are also a special case discussed below.)

Why can't I find their marriage?
They may have married outside the county, or a record may have been lost, but by far the most likely explanation is simply that they never formally married! Such informal marriages, often (but inaccurately) called "common-law marriages" were quite common and carried no stigma. Church weddings were expensive and unlike the situation for baptisms described above, there was no strong theological reason for a church wedding. So you will find many instances of families with firm religious beliefs, who conscientiously baptised their children but never married in church.

Surely everyone married in church after Lord Hardwicke's marriage act of 1753?
It is a common fallacy that Lord Hardwicke's act was about protecting the morality of the nation and ensuring that everyone was "properly married". This is not true. The act was not about morality, it was mostly about money! The act was precipitated by a case finally resolved in the House of Lords in 1753, which had been under way since 1746, following the death of Captain John Campbell, of Carrick, who was killed at the battle of Fontenoy in 1745. Captain Campbell had been irregularly married in 1724 and 1725 to two different women, who were subsequently disputing rights to his property and a widow's pension. (You can read all about it at http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/17.1/leneman.html
In rural Oxfordshire such property disputes were of no great significance and irregular marriages continued until the advent of "Victorian morality" towards the end of the 19th century. Such marriages were not legally valid, but if you were an impoverished Ag. Lab. the legal status of your marriage was of no great consequence.

Why did they marry in the City of Oxford when they lived in the country?
It is quite common to find a couple, often both from the same parish, who marry in an Oxford City parish, then apparently return home to live and raise and baptise a family. Were they temporarily living in Oxford? Almost always the answer is no. Did they marry in Oxford to be "posh". Again the answer is usually no. Most often they were Ag. Labs. with no such illusions of grandeur. The real answer is more prosaic and peculiar to Oxford, where many of the academics were clerics, who would supplement their finances with an incumbency of one of the surrounding rural parishes. This required them to be present in their parish on Sundays to conduct services but they spent the rest of the week in the city. So some were reluctant to "traipse all the way out into the sticks", on other days of the week to marry a couple. How much easier to "borrow" a city church and persuade the couple to come into town? The result is a wedding in one of the city parishes, of which St Mary Magdalen seems to have been the most popular. Sometimes the register will record both partners as being "sojourners" in the parish but quite often they are recorded as being o.t.p. The rationale seems to be that as far as the person conducting the service was concerned, they were his parishioners and he had personally read their banns (in their own local church), on the preceding Sundays.

What is marriage by banns?
A forthcoming marriage had to be announced in the parish churches of both bride and groom by the reading of Banns as part of the main Sunday Service on three Sundays preceding the marriage. This gave anyone believing the proposed marriage to be unlawful, the opportunity to object. A fee was charged for the reading of banns, so there was some incentive for both parties to a marriage claiming to be from the same parish, so one set of banns would suffice, even if this was not strictly the case. The reading of banns was usually recorded in a book, separately from the main marriage register and some of these Banns Books have survived. They can be a useful aid to finding a "missing" marriage. OFHS parish register transcripts usually incorporate details from any surviving banns books, for cases where the marriage took place in a different parish. However there are no search indexes into these banns transcripts and you will need to view the actual transcript to see if they exist.

What is marriage by licence?
As an alternative to the reading of banns, it was possible to marry by licence. This offered a quicker route, with no need to wait three Sundays for the reading of banns. It also permitted a marriage in a parish in which neither bride nor groom were resident. Finally, because it required access to a source of money, it conferred social status. A marriage by licence involved three documents: The actual licence was given to the officiating minister and it was his authority to proceed with the wedding. They were rarely kept after the wedding, so few have survived. The allegation was a signed statement usually by the groom, that the proposed marriage was legal. The bond was a signed promise by someone that if the marriage was subsequently found to be illegal, he would forfeit a specified sum of money (most often "One hundred pounds of good English money"). This meant that the person signing the bond had to be someone deemed worthy of fulfilling this obligation should the need arise. The allegations and bonds were normally kept and many have now found their way to local record offices, in our case the Oxfordshire Record Office. (You will often find them colloquially referred to as a "marriage licence") Transcribed marriage registers will normally indicate when a marriage was by licence, so when providing details for a specific marriage as part of the Search Service, we will include that information. You will need to contact the record office directly to confirm whether the bond or allegation have survived and if so to obtain details of these.

What is marriage by registrar's certificate?
Occasionally a marriage register may show that a marriage after 1837 was by "Registrar's Certificate" rather than by banns or by licence. In effect this is the secular equivalent of banns. A notice is posted on a public notice board in the bride's and groom's registration district(s) for three weeks prior to the wedding showing their intention to marry. Like banns, this is intended to give anyone believing the proposed marriage to be unlawful, the opportunity to object. It was no quicker or cheaper than banns, so to the family historian it is most often a pointer that one or both parties was non-conformist and so did not want banns read out as part of an Anglican church service. The marriage had still to take place in premises licensed for the purpose, so before the days of established register office weddings, it may still take place in the local parish church, and so appear in the parish marriage register.

Who are the witnesses?
Following the implementation of Hardwicke's marriage act in 1754, all marriage register entries should include the signature of two witnesses to the marriage. We have no search service index into witness names but when providing full details of a marriage as the result of a search, we will include the witness names. Sometimes these will be other family members and so can provide useful extra evidence for the family historian. Quite often one finds one witness name being repeated for many marriages around the same time. This will normally imply that this person is the parish clerk. Where this is apparent, we will normally mention it when providing details for the marriage. If you have purchased parish register transcripts, it is worth while to look at all the other marriages in the parish for a few years either side of the marriage you are interested in. You will quite often find one or both of "your" couple acting as witnesses for their friends or relatives who married about the same time.

Why do some names have an "x" beside them?
In the marriage register, the bride and groom and the two witnesses were all required to sign their names. If they were unable to write, they marked a cross and the clerk noted the name alongside this. When transcribing registers we conventionally mark this with an "x" in brackets beside the name.

They left it a bit late didn't they?
There is a tendency nowadays to regard the "permissive society" as a modern invention and to assume that the strict urban Victorian morality of "no sex before marriage" was the norm for all time before that. This was certainly not the case for rural communities such as most of Oxfordshire, up to the end of the 19th century. If anything, the motto was "try before you buy!". The ability to produce children was crucial to a rural family. They were the people who you hoped would look after you in your old age. So if a couple planning marriage were unable to conceive a child, the marriage would probably not take place. Hence it is quite common to find the first child being born appreciably less than 9 months after the marriage.

At what age was it legal to marry?
In the UK, the Age of Marriage Act of 1929, specified a minimum age of 16 for a person to marry (with the consent of their parents). Prior to that a girl could marry at age 12 and a boy at age 14. However that does not mean that marriage at such a young age was common. It was in fact extrememly rare. For example in 1871, in the whole of England and Wales there were only 35 marriages in which the bride was under 16. (i.e. less than 0.02% of all marriages). (Source is from ONS web site.)

Do marriage records include details of occupation and parents?
After 1837 the record will include occupations for the bride and groom, together with the names of their fathers, and the fathers' occupations. Often the record will also indicate if the father is deceased. Before 1837 none of this information is recorded. Our search index entries do not include this information for any marriages, but if a detailed search for a specific marriage is requested we will automatically provide this information where it is available.

BURIALS
Where were they buried? Most commonly in the parish where they died. Usually this would be the parish where they lived but if someone happened to die away from home they might well be buried in the parish where they died rather than have the expense of transporting the body back home for burial. At the other end of the social scale, more affluent families may have owned vaults or burial plots in their "ancestral home parish" and so the deceased would be taken back there for burial. Can I trust the age in a burial register? In a word, "no". Ages of infants or young married people are usually reliable but for older folk, the deceased themselves probably had only an approximate idea of their age, and anyway were in no position to say! The entry in the register is often little more than a guess by the parish clerk and any surviving relatives. I can't find a burial. What are the alternatives? Baptisms and marriages can often not have taken place and so go unrecorded, but everyone dies eventually. So if they were not buried where you expect, they must have been buried somewhere else. If this was in Oxfordshire, the Search Service can often help locate the burial. If not found, they may have left the county, or indeed the country. The latter could have been as voluntary emigrants, or as transportees as a results of some misdemeanour.

CIVIL REGISTRATION AND CERTIFICATES
Where can I get a certificate for a pre-1837 birth / marriage / death? You can't! Certificates for births, marriages and deaths did not exist before the start of civil registration in 1837. Can you send me a birth / marriage / death certificate? No. We cannot supply such certificates. You need to order them either from the General Register Office, or from the local Register Office of the district in which the birth, marriage or death was registered. The FreeBMD web site at www.freebmd.org.uk is a good place to start a search for such records. This site also contains details of how to order certificates on the page www.freebmd.org.uk/Certificates.html His death was registered in 1867 at Chipping Norton (for example), can you look up the burial? No. It is a common misconception that a birth, marriage or death registered at a town such as Chipping Norton, means that the event actually took place in that town. This is far from the case. Registration districts cover a large area, with each registration district including around 30 parishes, and it is not practical to look up each of these by hand. Moreover the registration districts do not follow county boundaries, so for example the Chipping Norton district includes some parishes in Gloucestershire and Warwickshire, as well as those in Oxfordshire. Had the death been in or before 1851, we could conduct a burial index search but after that date you have no option other than to purchase the certificate.

CENSUSES
My ancestor's age in 1841 seems wrong? The method of recording ages in the 1841 census is a source of great confusion, not least to some of the enumerators who conducted the census! The instructions given to the enumerator were: "Write the age of every person under 15 years of age as it is stated to you. For persons aged 15 years and upwards, write the lowest of the term of 5 years within which the age is." So if the age appearing in this census is 35 for example, you should expect the true age of the person to be anywhere between 35 and 39. The instructions go on to give some examples which should have made things clear but some enumerators still got it wrong. The most common "mistake" is to ignore the instructions altogether and record exact ages, which is great for us, as family historians. The fact that the adult ages are not multiples of 5 years gives a clue when this is happening, but even this should be treated with caution. I have come across one enumerator who consistently subtracted exactly 5 years from every age! My ancestor's birthplace in 1841 seems wrong? The 1841 census did not record actual birthplaces. The only indication is a column headed: "Where born - Whether in the same County." and another headed "Whether born in Scotland, Ireland or Foreign Parts". For the first of these, the instructions given to the enumerator were: "Write opposite to each name (except those of Irish, Scotch or Foreigners) "Y." or "N." for Yes or No as the case may be." For the second, the instructions were: "Write in this column, "S." for those who were born in Scotland; "I." for those born in Ireland; and "F." for Foreigners. This latter mark to be used only for those who are subjects of some Foreign State, and not for British subjects who happen to have been born abroad." Nowhere does this answer the question "Whether in the same county as what, or whom?" The intention was that the "Y" and "N" should indicate the birth county relative to the county in which the person was now living, but this is not clearly stated and a high proportion of the letters are wrong. Some enumerators seem to have interpreted it as "in the same county as the head of the household" or as "in the same county as the previous person entered in the schedule." Note also that a correctly entered "N", with the second column left blank, can indicate a British subject born in Buckinghamshire, Wales, or Timbuktu, but not in Scotland or Ireland! A correctly entered "Y" indicates that the person was born in Oxfordshire, but not necessarily (as is assumed by some beginners) that they were born in the actual town or village where they were living in 1841. My ancestor seems to be missing in 1841? During the summer months, some agricultural workers lived in temporary field shelters. The 1841 census was held on 7th June by which time these people were away from home and so "escaped" the attention of the census enumerator. Later censuses were held earlier in the year at the end of March or the beginning of April, partly to avoid this problem. My ancestor seems to be missing in 1861? The census enumerators' books for 1861 for the Woodstock sub-district, are missing. So if your ancestor lived within this area (which extended as far south as Kidlington and Wolvercote), they will not appear in the 1861 census.

CENSUSES

My ancestor's age in 1841 seems wrong?
The method of recording ages in the 1841 census is a source of great confusion, not least to some of the enumerators who conducted the census! The instructions given to the enumerator were: "Write the age of every person under 15 years of age as it is stated to you. For persons aged 15 years and upwards, write the lowest of the term of 5 years within which the age is." So if the age appearing in this census is 35 for example, you should expect the true age of the person to be anywhere between 35 and 39. The instructions go on to give some examples which should have made things clear but some enumerators still got it wrong. The most common "mistake" is to ignore the instructions altogether and record exact ages, which is great for us, as family historians. The fact that the adult ages are not multiples of 5 years gives a clue when this is happening, but even this should be treated with caution. I have come across one enumerator who consistently subtracted exactly 5 years from every age!

My ancestor's birthplace in 1841 seems wrong?
The 1841 census did not record actual birthplaces. The only indication is a column headed: "Where born - Whether in the same County." and another headed "Whether born in Scotland, Ireland or Foreign Parts". For the first of these, the instructions given to the enumerator were: "Write opposite to each name (except those of Irish, Scotch or Foreigners) "Y." or "N." for Yes or No as the case may be." For the second, the instructions were: "Write in this column, "S." for those who were born in Scotland; "I." for those born in Ireland; and "F." for Foreigners. This latter mark to be used only for those who are subjects of some Foreign State, and not for British subjects who happen to have been born abroad."
Nowhere does this answer the question "Whether in the same county as what, or whom?" The intention was that the "Y" and "N" should indicate the birth county relative to the county in which the person was now living, but this is not clearly stated and a high proportion of the letters are wrong. Some enumerators seem to have interpreted it as "in the same county as the head of the household" or as "in the same county as the previous person entered in the schedule." Note also that a correctly entered "N", with the second column left blank, can indicate a British subject born in Buckinghamshire, Wales, or Timbuktu, but not in Scotland or Ireland! A correctly entered "Y" indicates that the person was born in Oxfordshire, but not necessarily (as is assumed by some beginners) that they were born in the actual town or village where they were living in 1841.

My ancestor seems to be missing in 1841?
During the summer months, some agricultural workers lived in temporary field shelters. The 1841 census was held on 7th June by which time these people were away from home and so "escaped" the attention of the census enumerator. Later censuses were held earlier in the year at the end of March or the beginning of April, partly to avoid this problem.

My ancestor seems to be missing in 1861?
The census enumerators' books for 1861 for the Woodstock sub-district, are missing. So if your ancestor lived within this area (which extended as far south as Kidlington and Wolvercote), they will not appear in the 1861 census.

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