Project Update – Gretna Green, Scotland, Marriage Registers


The Gretna Green Marriage Registers are a collection of scrap papers with marriage records written on them.   Many couples in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – and today – went to Gretna Green to be married.  At the time Scotland had more liberal laws regarding marriage so it was a popular place, especially for eloping couples.  The stories of Gretna Green are fascinating.

Many of the papers you will see are torn and you will only be able to key what you can see in its entirety.  The handwriting is a little difficult to read but with practice it becomes easier.

When you open an image set you will notice that the project instructions appear on the screen – we feel it is especially important to read these instructions before keying.  If you would like to visit the project page please click here.

Enjoy!


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Reader Comments

hi
I am looking forward to doing these records, however, it seems everything I key in comes up red? At first I thought it was the misspelling of counties (eg lancshare) however, it is not accepting Bristol or bridgewater? Is there something technically wrong I wonder?

Wow! This project is flying along! If you have time to look at the help article it can be viewed here, http://ancestry.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/ancestry.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=4591 .

Thisis a particularly interesting project – but the first documents I have done were full of mis-spellings. I know we are told to type what we see, but is there a case for adding suggested correct spellings? I cannot imagine it would be easy to use an index composed of many of these spellings.

I am confused about correcting spelling errors in names, counties and parishes. If we are NOT to make any corrections, why is there a drop-down list to choose from? Choosing from the list almost always gives a different spelling from the writers (esp. Mr. Simon Lang). I agree with Alan White.

Re Maddy Phillips comment, I find that a final space after keying an entry is necessary to avoid an erroneous auto-completion, but it also leads to the red flag that requires an F7-Acceptance click. Can the program be altered to accept final space(s) as correct?

I have found two sheets already that list numerous brides and grooms and a page number. This looks like an index showing what page more information is on. How do I key this in?

When keying in a county name like Dumfries and the “suggested entries” offers up Dumfriesshire. How should that be keyed – as written, or as the suggested entry?

These records do not seem to be available for me to download today

Is there any reason why I cannot see this set in the list of available projects?