Hardwicke's Marriage Act of 1753

Hardwicke's Marriage Act 1753 was also titled ‘An Act for the better preventing of Clandestine Marriages’ and was the first statutory legislation in England and Wales to require a formal ceremony of marriage and to require that formal ceremony to be conducted in the Church of England Parish Church. It was also a requirement of Hardwicke's Marriage Act that the union was registered by a parson.

During the 1740s, out of the approximately 47,000 marriages taking place in England, 6,000 took place outside of a parish church, and so it was felt that marriages should be regulated in order to prevent so many clandestine marriages from taking place.

Prior to Hardwicke's Marriage Act, the canon law of the Church of England stipulated that banns should be called (which gave people the opportunity to raise objections to the marriage) or a marriage licence should be obtained before a marriage took place.  Obtaining a marriage licence meant banns did not need to be called.  It is worth noting that prior to the 1753 Act this was not compulsory and a marriage was still considered valid even if it was not celebrated in church.  

The Act came into force on 25th March 1754 and was read out in churches and chapels on Sundays in 1753, 1754 and 1755 because a lot of people could not read or write. 

The main points of Hardwickes Marriage Act 1753

• Before a couple could get married, banns had to be read out on three consecutive Sundays or a marriage licence had to be obtained.
• If a person was under the age of 21, they required parental consent before they could legally marry
• Marriages should be recorded in separate books which had numbered and ruled pages so that no fraudulent entries could be made to the register.
• The entry should be signed by the minister, the couple and two witnesses.

If your ancestors were nonconformists (Methodists, Baptists, etc) they had to marry in a Church of England ceremony or their marriage would not be recognized legally and their children considered illegitimate.  Quakers and Jews were exempt from this ruling and could marry in their own places of worship.  Members of the British Royal Family were also exempt.  

If a member of the clergy was found to be breaking the Act’s new law, they could be sentenced to transportation for 14 years.

The stipulations laid down by Hardwicke's Marriage Act 1753 meant that many couples chose to marry in Gretna Green or other places in Scotland in order to get around the Act.  The law was different in Scotland where couples only had to declare their intent to marry in the presence of two witnesses. This loophole was not closed in Scotland until the Act of 1856 which that declared that a couple could not marry in Gretna Green (or elsewhere in Scotland) unless they had resided in the country for three weeks prior to the date of the marriage.

Hardwicke's Marriage Act was repealed in 1849.

Who Do You Think You Are Magazine

The latest issue of Who Do You Think You Are magazine is now available free online for Campaspe Library members via our subscription to Libby eMagazines.

Inside this month's issue: 

• Workhouse records Our complete guide to tracing your ancestor in the workhouse
• Bigamy How to trace ancestors who married twice
• Tuberculosis The story of one of the deadliest diseases of Victorian Britain
• Travel and passenger lists Tracing ancestors who emigrated overseas
• The Holocaust Where to find records of the genocide online
• Kent Our complete guide to family history records in the county
• And more...
  

 

Week 3 (Jan. 15-21): Favorite Photo

The prompt for Week 3 is 'Favorite Photo', and it is hard to choose just one from my collection.

Over the years I have been quite fortunate in accumulating old family photographs from a variety of sources.  Many are copies of photos held by family members, while others have come from libraries and archives, local history societies, distant relatives and heritage projects.  While the bulk of my collection are good digital scans I also have a number of original photos that I have inherited.  All my originals have been scanned for future preservation and happily shared with fellow family members.  I have also detailed who, where and when in as much detail as I can for each one - my pet hate is the anonymous photo of nobody-knows-who included in an album of family members.

One of my favourite family photos is the one below of my father Peter with his siblings and their father, Frank Walter Green.  Dad was one of 10 children and to the best of my knowledge it is the only photo of all 10 siblings together, which makes the scanned image I have even more precious.  And yes, one of the brothers does have a beer bottle balanced on his head!  That would be Ernest, known to all as Squib, the second eldest of the Green siblings.  If there are any relatives out there who have another photo of all 10 siblings together, I would love to hear from you and am happy to share copies!

Another favorite is the wedding photo of my great great grandparents James Nicholas Clark and Pricilla Veronica Mulholland.  Dating back to 1898, it is one of the oldest photographs I have from my mother's side of the family, and I am lucky to hold the original of this photo too.

Finally, there is the tinted studio photograph of my mother as a child.  Aged 5 years old, this photograph was taken to be sent to my mothers older brother James, or Jimmy, in 1947.  Jimmy was in the Merchant Navy at the time, and this photo chased him around the world before being delivered to his ship only days after he was killed in an accident in Argentina while they were picking up a load of horses to be taken to Poland.  Jimmy is buried in Argentina, and the photo was returned to his mother in an unopened letter included in his effects, making the photo even more precious.

Week 2 (Jan. 8-14): Origins

The prompt for this week is 'Origins', which tends to make me think of the origins of my family in Australia, and why my ancestors made the momentous decision to leave their homelands and families and make the journey to Australia.

On my paternal side, our history in Australia is a short one.  My father's parents were born and married in England before deciding to try their luck in Australia, arriving here in the early 20th century.  They arrived as a newly married couple, with all ten of their children born in Australia.  In their early years the family moved several times around Victoria, with the children dispersing around the southern states as they established their own families.

On my mother's side our Australian origins go back further.

My great grandfather, James Nicholas Clark, was born in Bristol, England or possibly Launceston, Tasmania around 1856, just as the family emigrated to Australia.  James’s younger sister Annie Amelia Clark was born 31 March 1857 in Port Sorrell, Tasmania, where the family lived for at least 12 years before they crossed Bass Strait and settled in Victoria.

Then there is my German branch of the family tree.  Carl Friedrich Beseler, known in Australia as Frederick, was born around 1810 in Hanover, Germany.  He was a shoemaker in Germany and a farmer in Australia, arriving in Adelaide on 1 April 1848 on the ship Pauline from Bremen, Germany.  Passengers listed were Frederick Beseler, Shoemaker, Mrs Beseler and 5 children.  The family lived in South Australia for 7 years before travelling overland to Victoria, where they settled near Ercildown.  Several members of the family are buried in Learmonth Cemetery. 

I would like to know what prompted these families, with young children in tow, to pack up and move halfway around the world, settle in one state of Australia, then pack up and move again several years later.  Land in their homelands would have been difficult and costly to acquire, so the prospect of cheap land for farming may have been a big motivator in both cases.  Many Germans also emigrated for freedom from religious persecution.

Then there are my Irish ancestors, who left Ireland a few years before the potato famine.  Again, I suspect Australia represented the chance for a better life, a chance to own land and improve the family's living conditions.

For whatever their reasons, my original Australian immigrant ancestors made a huge leap of faith to leave their homelands and travel to a distant country, most with little chance of returning to their homeland if their new lives proved less than they hoped.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Blogging Challenge

This year I have once again decided to participate in the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks blogging challenge run by Amy Johnson Crow.  I have done this challenge a few times in the past, and although I an a few weeks late in starting I hope to catch up fairly quickly.

On to week one (January 1-7), the prompt for which if 'Family Lore'.

I have always enjoyed listening to the family stories told by my parents and other family members, and have several notebooks filled with a variety of stories, many told from the perspective of multiple family members.  

Once I started researching in earnest, I set about finding any records for many of the stories I had been told, and was able to prove - and disprove - some of them.  Others generated no official records and remain family lore.  The best were anecdotal, bringing to life details of my family's lives that without the stories I would know nothing about.

A favourite is my maternal grandmother's first visit to my parents after they married.  My mother was a city girl, born in the Melbourne suburb of Brighton.  Grandmother was born in Brighton, married there, lived her entire life there, and died there.  At the time of my mother's marriage, my grandmother had never been further north than the Melbourne City Baths.

In her early 20s my mother 'went bush', leaving Melbourne to take up a post as a governess on a remote sheep station near the rural town Mildura, over 500km north of Melbourne.  It is here that she met my father, and after their marriage moved to the sheep station 'Para' where my father worked.  Situated on the Darling River, Para was approximately an hour's drive north-east of Mildura, much of the drive on dirt roads.  For my grandmother, mum might as well have been living on another planet.

When my sister was born, Grandmother decided it was time to visit her daughter and new granddaughter, so she boarded a train and made the journey to Mildura, where my parents met her for the drive out to the station homestead.

I have heard the story of this journey from my father, mother and grandmother.  All agree on the shock my grandmother felt at the distance and isolation.  The open spaces daunted her and the concept of the nearest neighbor being almost 30 minutes away was utterly foreign.  'Are we there yet?' was frequently asked.  It was a complete culture shock.

Grandmother eventually reconciled herself to my mother's choice to live in country areas, and was much mollified when my parents moved to the town of Moama (at least we had proper neighbors and decent plumbing!), and was a regular visitor throughout my childhood.  The story of her first visit, however, remains a favourite part of our family lore.

Explore Your Genealogy

Explore Your Genealogy is an educational website developed by the Family History Federation that relates to every aspect of tracing your family history, from the very first steps to more complex research.

The main objective of the website is to promote the study and interest in family history (and associated disciplines including local and social history) in a free-to-access, easy-to-navigate website.  New articles and topics are being added regularly. 

Explore Your Genealogy already covers a range of topics, beginning with a section on 'How do I start?"  Further topics include :

• Civil Registration
• Parish Registers
• Family Heirlooms
• Wills
• Graveyards
• Military
• Archives
• DNA
• Poor Law Records
•  Census Records
• And much more

Each topic heading can contain multiple articles containing a wealth of information useful to beginners and experienced researchers alike.  There is always something new to learn!

The Family History Federation also produces the Really Useful Bulletin, which is published monthly and free to all.  The Bulletin will provide information about updates on a regular basis, and past issues can also be viewed on the website.

Emerald Roots Podcasts

Emerald Roots is the official podcast for the Irish Family History Centre, discussing all things Irish and those elusive Irish ancestors.

2023 saw Emerald Roots post 7 podcasts, covering Irish surnames and what they can possibly tell you about your Irish roots, the Irish roots of Bruce Springsteen to celebrate his return to Ireland, chatting with the cast of 'In the Midst of Plenty', a new Irish folk musical set in 1847 and Proud for Pride, the 30th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Ireland.

2024 starts off with a Welcome Back episode that aims to fill you in on the anniversaries and the Emerald Roots plans for 2024.  I look forward to more podcasts that might help me finally trace my own elusive Irish ancestors.