Find out if your British ancestors married in the English county of Derbyshire. Search more than 775,000 records to find their names, who they married and when they married.
Find out if your British ancestors married in the English county of Derbyshire. Search more than 775,000 records to find their names, who they married and when they married.
Each record contains the transcription of an original parish record. A small number of records will also provide you with an image. The information contained varies but you could be able to find out the following about your ancestor:
Name
Age
Marital status
Date of birth
Date of marriage
Spouse’s name
Occupation
Residence
Father’s name
Father’s occupation
Whether married by banns or licence
Parish
Images
The records with images were provided by The National Archives and created by the College of Arms, the official heraldic authority for England, Wales, Northern Ireland and much of the Commonwealth including Australia and New Zealand. The records will provide you with details found in the original parish register.
There are 124,511 records in this collection taken from the marriage registers from more than 80 parishes.
Before the introduction of the civil registration of births, marriages and deaths in 1837 all such events were recorded in the local parish.
Parish records generally begin from 1538 after the Church of England mandated the keeping of parish registers in 1537. Baptisms, marriages and burials were all recorded in a single volume until 1774, when the law changed to require a separate marriage register and another one for Banns (or proclamations of an intent to marry). Standardised forms for these registers appeared in 1812.
Banns had been introduced in the Act for the Better Prevention of Clandestine Marriages of 1754. They were read out on three consecutive Sundays to allow anyone with a reason that the marriage should not go ahead to come forward. The alternative for the couple was to get married by Licence when, on payment of a fee, they could swear that no impediment to their marriage existed.
Other religious denominations, with the exception of the Quakers and Jews, often registered these events in their local Church of England parish even after the Toleration Act of 1689 although between 1754 and 1837 it was illegal to marry anywhere other than a Church of England parish.
Derbyshire is in the East Midlands of England. The southern extremity of the Pennine range of hills stretches into the north of the county. The country also contains part of the National Forest with Greater Manchester to the northwest, West Yorkshire to the north, South Yorkshire to the northeast, Nottinghamshire to the east and Leicestershire to the southeast. Staffordshire is to the west and southwest and Cheshire is also to the west.
These transcriptions are the work of Helen Betteridge and Jean Shannon.