I recently came across the following item which may be of interest to anyone currently pursuing their English heritage. Glance over the following two documents and note the discrepancy in the marriage data for Thomas Bracegirdle and Jane Hatton. The first is a civil copy of the marriage, dated 1843, while the second is the ecclesiastical copy of the same event.

Yes, these two documents do indeed provide differing names for Jane’s father, even though the two documents pertain to the same event. I had originally identified this marriage in civil records, and of course, it was perfectly reasonable to suspect that this was an accurate copy of the original church record. But no, it was not!

I think that many genealogists are cautious by nature. We often wish to find additional documentation that supports statements made in other records, where time permits. In this case, I knew that there was a readily accessible church copy of this event, and thought it prudent to cross-reference data. The fact that I did this potentially saved me many hours of frustrating research.

In this particular instance, the church record is the record to be relied upon, since it was drawn up at the exact time of the marriage ceremony, and was of course signed by the marriage parties and two witnesses. The civil record is a “duplicate” copy made by the minister and passed on to civil authorities. He obviously made an error. As can be seen in the church copy of the marriage, the minister presided over more than one marriage that day, and oversaw a large parish. It is easy to understand how such a mistake could have been made.

The point to be made here, is that it is always useful to understand the mechanics behind the resources we use. That way, we can come to educated and accurate conclusions when presented with conflicting data. It is important, where possible, to always document our ancestors as much as we possibly can.