PHILP marriage, St Andrews, 1709

[jennyblain]

Hi all,
I'm a bit puzzled. In pursuit of Philps from St Andrews, I found on familysearch a marriage on 22 Dec 1709, John Philp and Janet Fortune. The familysearch entry claimed that the couple's fathers were Alexander Philp and John Fortune. I checked with the old IGI site that this was an 'extracted' entry, not from an LDS submitter.

As I was attempting to track family of an Alexander Philp who'd a son of the right age to be this John, I got the marriage from SP. However the record I've downloaded - embedded in Kirk Session records as quite a lot of the St Andrews' marriages are - gives only:
"This day Andrew Lowdon and Christian Morton, also John Hay and Helen Ness and Likeways John Philp and Janet Fortune were married."

So, could there be a proclamation entry that gives the two fathers, and that isn't indexed by SP? I've seen other 'embedded' marriage entries which are under the date of 'contraction' and payment, then have an annotation of the date of marriage, but this one has only 'were married' with no contraction. There are two SP index items, but they both have the same file numbers and point to the same records page (and I've been through all the earlier text of that page but it has nothing on this couple, being only a record of one session meeting).

Any thoughts? I may try dropping SP a line.

Jenny

[Currie]

Hello Jenny,

Maybe they were actually married in St Leonard’s. The marriage shows up twice in St Leonard’s as well. There were separate marriage registers for each. Maybe you’ll have to do the search etc again there. The combined parish is probably confusing the system.

I think I heard somewhere they weren’t putting submissions on the new LDS site, but could be wrong.

All the best,
Alan

[jennyblain]

I'd heard that too (about no putting member submissions on new familysearch site) but don't have confirmation, so when my SP record came up with very bare bones my first thought was to check that the familysearch one wasn't somebody making it up

However, my original SP search was in three parishes including St Andrews, St Leonards, and Dunino. This index item is the only one from that search that's doubled, and I could understand it if the two items pointed to two records - but they don't as they both go to the same place and when you've paid for one the other shows up as paid also. If you search on St A's, there are two, if on St L's, two, St A's and St L's, two... which I think are all the same one, not two.

I've an interesting slightly-earlier (1700) record from St Leonards which properly gives the parish of each of the couple (Philp and Duncan) and mentions a 'testimonial' being brought from St Andrews to confirm that banns have been called etc.

All best,
Jenny

[Montrose Budie]

The basic problem here is that while the Established Church of Scotland required records to be kept, little or no guidance was given to ministers and session clerks as to the form or content of these records, - just that 'registers should be kept', unlike in England where there were very clear guidelines as to the form and the content.

In Scotland it was down to the minister and/or the session clerk as to the form and content, as can often be seen in the same parish when either the minister or the session clerk changed.

Hence you will find 'marriage' records that consist of 1. just a record of the sum paid, presumably for the crying of the banns; 2. the proclamation of the banns, but only sometimes with a date of the later marriage; 3. the date of the marriage, as above, plus, only sometimes, however, a reference back to the banns.

#2 can be particularly frustrating as how can one be certain that the marriage took place? The answer is that often you can't be certain!

The only guidance that I can offer is to look at other entries on the same page, plus, preferably, at least a page before and after. If there is consistently a date of marriage, but the entry of interest doesn't have such, then it may well be the case that the marriage never actually took place. In such a circumstance there may be a reference in the kirk session minutes, especially if a sum of money had been paid as surety, or if there was an objection from someone after one of the proclamations.

In the absence of a consistent lack of the mention of the date of the marriage, and nothing helpful in the kirk session minutes, then you are just left with the probability that the marriage took place, but no absolute certainty.

As in this case, some ministers and session clerks didn't keep a separate register but just added in information to the kirk session records, or, even, to the kirk accounts, sometimes on a quite random basis.

From 1855 when GROS gathered in the OPR records (later in the 1800s for certain dates) GROS have gone to considerable lengths to extract birth, marriage, and death records that were imbedded in kirk session minutes, kirk accounts and other records apart from specific old parish registers, but that's not to say that every last such piece of relevant information in kirk session minutes, kirk accounts, and other records has been identified and added to the OPR indexes on ScotlandsPeople.

Note in passing that the Established Church didn't always make life easy for the Registrar General Scotland.

The 1854 legislation required churches to hand over their registers of births and marriages to the Registrar General Scotland.

Based on a view that this was undue state interference in church affairs, a good number of churches refused to do so, arguing that they had no such records; quite correct as their registers referred to christenings and proclamations, not, as the legislation defined, births and marriages !

The original 1854 legislation had to be amended to deal with the most recalcitrant churches !

mb