I've recently started reading a book set in Jersey, Paper Bullets: Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis. It's for an online book club and reminds me of the surprising family links that I've found to the island. It also reminds me of another brick wall that I encountered. I had searched for the marriage of William S Chambers and Sarah Ann Chubb for years. Their son, my grandfather, was born in Harborne, County Stafford in 1884, but they hadn't been married in the same place. Nor could I find a marriage record in any place that I had traced either of my great grandparents to before they were married. Many checks of the GRO registers turned up nothing.
Maybe they hadn't married at all or, like other couples in my family, had been married to someone else but left them to cohabit with each other. Divorce at that time was way beyond a working couple's reach. There was also the possibility they'd married after my grandfather's birth. But nothing showed up in the GRO records after 1884 either.
Then one day I checked out the newspapers on FindMyPast. It was The Northern Mercury of Saturday, November 13, 1880 that carried the marriage announcement that I sought. William Strange Chambers of Nuneaton had married on October 28 in St. Heliers, Jersey. His bride was Sarah Ann Conway the eldest daughter of the late Wm Chubb, of St. Heliers. So if a marriage record proves elusive, it just might help to trawl newspapers online.
Sources:
FindMyPast Newspaper
collections
No comments:
Post a Comment