County Marriages Edit Form: Help

This page permits updating the database of pre-Confederation Marriage Registrations which consists of annual reports from ministers of religion or other marriage registrars. These reports are organized by Militia District up to 1858 for Upper Canada and by County from 1858 to 1869 for Canada West. These reports contain less information than the post-confederation registrations, and are organized differently.

The form is presented in two slightly different formats depending upon the selection criteria:

• If the request limited the search to marriages within a single report, that is within the marriages performed by a particular minister of religion within a particular year, then the minister of religion, his affiliation, and normal residence are displayed at the top, and the title of the page contains the identification of the specific report.
  Furthermore a navigation line appears above the tabular report providing a link to the preceding item or report, and a link to the next item or report, depending upon whether a specific item was identified in the request. Also a button is displayed to view the original image if defined.
  If the identified report does not yet exist in the database then an empty form with 10 items is displayed.
• Otherwise the information for identifying the report within which each marriage registration is contained is displayed as three columns at the beginning of each line of the marriage registration.

Each row of the displayed table of information includes:

1. If the search request did not identify a specific report a column to display the domain name.
2. If the search request did not identify a specific report a column to display the volume number.
3. If the search request did not identify a specific report a column to identify the report by number.
4. The item number within a particular minister's report. Each item includes two rows, one with information about the groom and one containing information about the bride.
5. The role is either 'B' for bride, or 'G' for groom.
6. The given names of the spouse.
7. The surname of the spouse.
8. The age of the spouse if it was provided in the original document.
9. The residence of the spouse. Special attention should be paid to the residence of the bride. Since these reports do not identify where the marriage took place, it is most probable that the marriage took place either at or near the residence of the bride.
10. The birth place of the spouse if it was provided in the original document.
11. The name of the father of the spouse if it was provided in the original document.
12. The name of the mother of the spouse if it was provided in the original document.
13. The date of the marriage. The value entered in the row for the groom is copied into the row for the bride.
14. An indicator of whether the authorization for the marriage was by Banns, 'B', or by license, 'L'. The value entered in the row for the groom is copied into the row for the bride.
15. The name of a witness to the marriage.
16. A space for remarks. Editorial remarks should be entered in square brackets.
17. Clicking on the Details button displays a form with the details of this particular marriage registration. At present this is performed by limiting the response to the two lines of the specific marriage registration.
18. Clicking on the Delete button deletes both the bride and groom records.
19. A button for linking to the family tree. If this displays a button showing "Find" then clicking on the button searches the family tree for potential matches.
    If this displays a button showing "Tree" and a button showing "Clear" then clicking on the "Tree" button displays an existing individual in the family tree, and clicking on the "Clear" button removes the linkage to the family tree and resets the cell to contain the "Find" button.

You can change the value of any of the fields except the item number and role. If you enter an unusual value in a field, the color of the text changes to red or if already colored to identify the role of the individual in the marriage, the text becomes bold, to warn you. Many of the fields also have a list of abbreviations that are expanded. For example the date column expands abbreviations for for the months.

To add additional records just press enter while the text cursor is in any field in the last row of the table. Pressing enter in any other row moves the focus down to the 'Role' field of the next row of the table.

Clicking on Update Database commits the changes you have made to the database. The page also supports the keyboard short-cuts Ctrl-S and Alt-U.

Since not all of the columns are present in all original reports you can hide the columns that are not available by clicking in the column header cell. If you later change your mind and wish to see the contents of the column you can click in the now narrow column header cell.