View Full Version : Bristol marriage records
A long time ago I came across this marriage transcription:
Gloucestershire, Bristol Marriage Index Transcription
First name(s) Elizabeth
Last name Flower
Marital status Single
Marriage date 06 Mar 1816
Place Bristol, St Nicholas
Town Bristol
County Gloucestershire
Spouse's first name(s) John
Spouse's last name Flower
Spouse marital status Single
Country England
Archive Bristol Archives
Archive reference Marriages, 1812 (P/St. N/R/3/c)
I have looked for a marriage for my ancestors, Elizabeth Flower and John Mitchell for years and this one is good for place and date, so I wondered if the groom's surname had been mis-transcribed. Obviously a long shot, but now the images are (apparently!) on Ancestry.
Here's an image of the register of St Nicholas, Bristol for a marriage dated 18 Jan 1816 on page 30 of the register..... when you turn the page, the next entry is dated 8 Mar 1816 on page 31.....
https://www.ancestry.com/interactive/5156/43138_636897_2125-00415/13790337?backurl=http%3a%2f%2fsearch.ancestry.com% 2fcgi-bin%2fsse.dll%3f_phsrc%3dACO4497%26_phstart%3dsucc essSource%26usePUBJs%3dtrue%26db%3dgloucmarriages% 26gss%3dangs-d%26new%3d1%26rank%3d1%26msT%3d1%26MS_AdvCB%3d1%26 msgdy%3d1816%26msgdy_x%3d1%26gskw%3dglou*%2520st%2 520Nich*%26gskw_x%3d1%26cpxt%3d1%26cp%3d11%26catbu cket%3drstp%26MSAV%3d2%26MSV%3d1%26uidh%3d672%26gl %3d%26gst%3d%26hc%3d50%26fh%3d50%26fsk%3dBEGeEuMIg AAUJAAEcEI-61-&backlabel=ReturnSearchResults#?imageId=43138_63689 7_2125-00414
....so where is the marriage for Elizabeth Flower? :mad:
kiterunner
11-04-18, 12:27
It looks to be St Nicholas, Gloucester, Merry. When I view the image, it says "Gloucester, St Nicholas" above it (in the ancestry data), and on the actual images, the word City is written above County, i.e. "St Nicholas in the City of Gloucester".
Bother!! That was a simple explanation!
Thanks Kate. :)
kiterunner
11-04-18, 13:22
You had me getting very excited for a minute there, Merry, when I thought ancestry had the Bristol images!
lol! :D
When I view the image, it says "Gloucester, St Nicholas" above it
In my defence, Ancestry doesn't like to tell me what database I am looking at when I have the image open. Generally it will say I am looking at something from New Jersey or Connecticut instead. No excuse really, as I did know Ancestry don't have Bristol, but got a bit carried away!
BTW, do you still search on exact matches and then Categories rather than Records?
In the last couple of weeks if there are more categories than there is room for on the opening page of results and I click "See all (a number) results....." I am then switched to Records instead of Categories. If I switch over to Categories again the number in each database increases from what I saw on the first page of results. I then get the issue of clicking a database only to find there are no results in it (the ones with apparently just a few matches). This only used to happen with the Bristol transcriptions datasets, but now it can be any of them.
kiterunner
11-04-18, 14:19
Yes, I do usually search on exact matches and look at Categories, but I don't think I've come across the situation you describe yet. No doubt it will happen to me any minute!
kiterunner
11-04-18, 14:29
Ancestry have replied to a recent visitor post on their Facebook page as follows: We are sorry for any frustration caused by this. We can assure you that we are actively working to fix the issues and hope to resolve them as soon as possible. We appreciate your patience and understanding and thank you for sharing your feedback with us.
Maybe they're talking about the same issues that you are having, Merry?
Yes, I do usually search on exact matches and look at Categories, but I don't think I've come across the situation you describe yet. No doubt it will happen to me any minute!
Ooops :o
Ancestry have replied to a recent visitor post on their Facebook page as follows: We are sorry for any frustration caused by this. We can assure you that we are actively working to fix the issues and hope to resolve them as soon as possible. We appreciate your patience and understanding and thank you for sharing your feedback with us.
Maybe they're talking about the same issues that you are having, Merry?
Maybe. Sounds like a generic apology!
lol! :D
In my defence, Ancestry doesn't like to tell me what database I am looking at when I have the image open. Generally it will say I am looking at something from New Jersey or Connecticut instead. No excuse really, as I did know Ancestry don't have Bristol, but got a bit carried away!
BTW, do you still search on exact matches and then Categories rather than Records?
In the last couple of weeks if there are more categories than there is room for on the opening page of results and I click "See all (a number) results....." I am then switched to Records instead of Categories. If I switch over to Categories again the number in each database increases from what I saw on the first page of results. I then get the issue of clicking a database only to find there are no results in it (the ones with apparently just a few matches). This only used to happen with the Bristol transcriptions datasets, but now it can be any of them.
Merry this happens to me.
I've found it to be the person you've searched for is recorded as parent/spouse in a record so appear in the number of results but then disappear or don't appear when you click on the database.
I thought I had that problem, but for me it's worse....
I just did a search and in "Birth, Marriage and Death, including Parish" I had a list of results and at the bottom of that section it said "See all 434 results....". When I clicked that there were no results displayed at all!
Merry, Familysearch have digitised copies of the records but they are restricted access to their Family History Centres or affiliate libraries. They also have that marriage indexed with the groom as John Flower though. I should be visiting one of the centres on Saturday, would you like me to have a look at the entry?
Nicki, that is very kind of you to offer. I would be most grateful, though I'm pretty sure it will turn out to be a red herring!!
Maybe I could ask that you only look at it after you have done your own stuff and if you have time? If there is no time left that is just fine!
You offering this has galvanised me to re-check what is going on at my own 'local' LDS FH centre - it was closed for ages and now I see it has switched to a different building a few miles nearer to where I live. That is worth investigating as I could never manage to get to the old centre. I might actually be able to reach this one, though the opening hours are mostly the wrong days!! lol
Thanks again xx
No worries Merry, Familysearch are showing an image number for that particular digitised film so should be easy enough to find.
It continues to amaze me just what they have available. Up until last Summer I'd not been able to attend one of the centres because of health issues and the fact its a 35 mile round trip (there is a closer one but they have limited hours) for quite a few years. When I last used them there was little yet digitised and ongoing issues accessing them at the centre. Now there is far more available (including films I paid to have on indefinite loan there) and its well worth the petrol cost to visit. Admittedly there are still issues with some films that show a DGS number (which means they have been digitised) but haven't been uploaded. Some were fixed last month. The issue can't be access issues because microfilm copies are held at other FHC and I can't think that access permissions from those Archives can have changed or the microfilm copies would have had to be returned. Looks like an ongoing issue with the site which hopefully they'll fix sometime soon. That said what is available at the FHCs is amazing and I keep finding new things to view. I sometimes feel a bit guilty getting access to the records for free rather than paying Archives in this country for copies, but then again we've spent a lot in the last 19 years researching obtaining copy wills, microfiche etc from various Archives so its nice to get some for a free apart from the travel costs which aren't also available on the commercial sites.
Hmmmm....... Sounds like I should be making more of an effort! Last time I visited the LDS centre here the opening hours were so short you had barely got your coat off before they were ushering you out again! Now it's 2.5 hour sessions which is much better.
Its definitely well worth going if you can. I always go armed with a (usually long) list of what I want to look at with the film numbers and details. Easy enough to do at home with the catalogue if you have internet access, that way I maximise what I can view/download to USB memory stick in the time available.
You mean be organised?!! ;(;(;(
Yup, but, as someone never known for being, if I can do it, anyone can!:D
Hi Merry, unfortunately its not the marriage you are looking for. The bridegroom is John Flower and he signs the register so not a mistake with that part of the entry either.
Nicki, thank you so much for looking. At least I can now stop wondering about that marriage and start looking harder for the right one!!
kiterunner
15-04-18, 15:27
Okay, ancestry's search has messed up for me now. Exact search in Australia for parents Alfred Reed and Mary Arthur produces over 1 million records! 11 of them are in the Australia, Birth Index, but when I click on it, there is only 1 record. I think that's the same kind of situation that you described, Merry. Let's hope they fix it soon.
Yes, that's right.
Every time I can't find some record I know I've already seen I blame Ancestry when it's probably just me!
kiterunner
15-04-18, 17:50
Hmm, I logged out of my account and repeated the search (I had to google for ancestry search page first) and it came back with just the 1 result.
Oh, that's a good idea (I never usually log out)! Will have a try........
Hmmm..... not much better... for instance,
I searched James Joyce b 1860 (all exact match) so I could write down the GRO ref I saw earlier.
The next page shows:
England & Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1837-1915....................11
but when I click on that the next screen shows
Results 1–50 of 99 and I see the "Broad > Exact" slider thing has moved to Broad without me asking it to. More bothersome is that when I look at the start of the list of results, only the first seven are registered in 1860, so where are the other four? EDIT - Oh, there's another one about half way down the first 50, but none over that page, so that first offer of 11 matches seems to be wrong.
Everything I look at on Ancestry had anomalies like this now.
kiterunner
15-04-18, 21:56
I tried your search while logged in, Merry, with the same results as you. I logged off and tried the search again, and it showed there were 8 results in the England & Wales Civil Registration Birth Index 1837-1915. I clicked to view them and it made me log in, then took me to the home page. I used the browser's back arrow to get back to the most recent page of search results, it still said 8 matches in that database and when I clicked to view them, it showed me 8 records, all James Joyce births in 1860, but two of them have James as the middle name rather than the first name.
Searching for James Joyce births in 1860 on FreeBMD comes up with 8 matches, but they are not all the same 8 as ancestry had those two with James as the middle name.
But I don't know whether that is because the FreeBMD database hasn't been updated recently on ancestry.
Certainly seems to be a messed up situation!
Pity they had to mess with it as it was fine before (assuming they have done something that is).
On FreeBMD if you want to include people with middle names James in the results, then you just put a + sign in front of the forename search.
Doing that gives me a total of 11 matches in 1860 on FreeBMD. 8 with James as first name and three with James as a middle name. Having cross ref'd the results, Ancestry don't have anything for Q1 1860, which accounts for the three 'missing' entries.
When I went to bed last night I realised I still hadn't written down the ref for my James Joyce!!
I've just realised I'm not getting any results for the LMA baps after 1813 when I do a general search. If I want stuff from that database I have to go into it to make the search. I'm now wondering if the same was happening earlier with Dorset? I just thought my relatives were a heathen lot. Now I'm going to have to search again!
That's been happening for the last few days with various county PR collections, Wiltshire being another one with issues. They appear to have caused issues with parishes not appearing in the search results for some collections. If you add the parish either to location or keyboard box, it often only brings up a few entries but if you then search against the county it shows more and hanging the mouse over "View Record" shows the parish in the details. That said, some appear in the search results but the parish is missing from the result details but others are missing completely where a parish has been specified, and also the total results for a collection on the global results page doesn't match the total when you select the collection to view (it appears to be less). They've really screwed up this time and seem to be closing their ears to any comments as per usual. I feel sorry for the customer service staff because they are getting the grief but its not their fault but the developers.
kiterunner
16-04-18, 16:28
Back in my days as a computer programmer, we would have backed out of whatever software update caused these problems, and then made sure it was fully tested before reintroducing it!
Back in my days as a computer programmer, we would have backed out of whatever software update caused these problems, and then made sure it was fully tested before reintroducing it!
Perhaps you should send your CV to Ancestry :D
kiterunner
16-04-18, 21:52
I rather think computers have moved on a bit since my days, Merry!
lol Well, I wish they would roll back their updates a couple of months!
kiterunner
26-04-18, 15:00
Here is an interesting blog post about the ancestry problems:
https://www.geneamusings.com/2018/04/are-there-search-problems-on-ancestrycom.html
lol Thought Bristol PR images were going live for a second!!
Yes, very interesting. I wondered about this bit in section D:
I have seen most of these problems also, and they've gotten more frequent over the past two months. They are very frustrating when they occur on a regular basis.
Is he saying there are times when the problems are not there? I'd like to know when that is!
kiterunner
31-05-18, 15:06
I have seen a few posts on Facebook quoting a statement by ancestry that the problems are due to system upgrades which they are working on and which should be finished today. I wonder what the chances are that it will all be working o.k. tomorrow?
vBulletin® v3.8.7 PL3, Copyright ©2000-2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.