Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Ancestry has added Gretna Green, Scotland, Marriage Registers, 1795-1895 to its World Archives Project to be indexed. This portion of the Gretna Green Collection is made up from a significant portion of the Lang Collection. The collection of marriage records were conducted by self appointed ministers at the border toll booths along the few roads into Scotland. Couples wanting to marry without parental consent, or those who didn’t want to marry in a church often traveled to Gretna Green where only the consent of the persons marrying was required by Scottish law. There are approximately 25,000 names in the original registers. The difficulty rating is advanced for most of the records; however, some records may be more difficult due to relative illegibility.
Below is a list of all of the collections currently being indexed (along with the percent completed) include:
- Southern California Naturalization Indexes – 31%
- Historic Postcards – US (Batch 4) – 75%Â
- England, Newspaper Index Cards (Andrews) – 30%Â
- Gretna Green, Scotland, Marriage Registers, 1795-1895 – 19%Â
- New York Naturalization Indexes – 31%Â
- New England Naturalization Indexes – 67%Â
- Illinois Naturalization Indexes – 10%Â
- N. California Naturalization Indexes – 2%Â
- NYC Naturalization Indexes – 14%Â
- Slave Manifests Filed at New Orleans, Louisiana, 1807-1860 – 3%Â
- Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, Piemonte, Italia: Registri di Matrimonio e Morte, 1866-1937 (Italy: Marriage and Death Records) – 2%Â
- Sydney and New South Wales, Sands Street Index, 1861-1930 – 5%Â
- Ontario, Canada Marriages Registers by Clergy 1896 – 1948 – 15%
To learn more, check out the free webinar that was held on the World Archives Project in the Learning Center webinar archive. There is also an article on Reading Old Handwriting in the Help section of Ancestry.com, that is useful both in keying for the World Archive Project and in reading the handwriting we’re faced with in our research.
The Gretna Green marriages were usually clandestine type marriages as the young people from Northern England would slip into Scotland and be married at Gretna Green, Scotland. It is amazing that the ones who performed the marriage ceremonies were usually the blacksmiths. A lot of these marriages occurred under cover of darkness.
GLAD THESE ARE ON THE WAY. I CAN USE THEM!
What is the status of the Alabama State Census, which I think was one of the first recordsets to be created from the World Archives Project?
Did John Finnie marry at Gretna Green?
John Finnie married Jessie Birch