Never give up! Interesting find

[Anne in Carlisle]

I have in my tree a 3x great uncle Thomas Peer, who married in Bedford Q3 1837. I know from censuses that he married Sarah but there are two Sarahs on the GRO index page and I had no clue as to which one it was. her maiden name has been ------ in my tree for years!

Just now I decided to look in newspapers for Thomas Peer of Bedford (not a common name) and what did I find???? A long report of the marriage between Thomas Peer and Sarah Sletcher on 18th July 1837. The reason for the report (and the over 300 people reported to attend the wedding) was that it was the very first marriage to take place in the Dissenters' Meeting House in Mill Street, Bedford under the new Marriage Act. Reported in the Bedfordshire Mercury 22 July 1837.

Anne

[Bo the Bodger]

What a great find

[Olde Crone Holden]

Years ago I found something similar in, of all things, a scrap book which had been donated to a local archives. I nearly fell off my chair when I read the cutting because it had all sorts of extra information (and people) that just weren't on the marriage cert. I consider it one of my little gems!

OC

[Janet]

Great find! Yes, there is so much information in newspapers of which we are not always aware. I will have to redoule my efforts on some of my own brickwalls!

Janet

[Janet in Yorkshire]

A brilliant find for you, Anne, well done for your persistence New data comes onto the web weekly and so I've found it really is a case of revisiting old haunts from time to time.
We have to keep in mind that sometimes only publications for 2 or 3 years at a time are added to the newspaper sites, but we fall into the trap of "looked there, search completed" rather than "looked there, nothing yet."
About 5 years ago someone asked me about out village war memorial and I reported back that nothing had shown up in a newspaper search. Since then, whilst continuing to do one of my general sweeps for the name of the village, about 6 months ago I found a very detailed report of the unveiling of the newly erected said memorial. A couple of weeks ago someone mentioned at a village meeting that he had been to all the local record offices but had been unable to find anything about the memorial. He was delighted to see my find, which answered a lot of his queries. I'm a great believer in "I haven't discovered anything YET."

Jay

[Guest]

how exciting

[ThreeRivers]

Very exciting. I agree about never giving up. Those newspapers archives are amazing. I'm fortunate that my ancestors immigrated to a major city (Pittsburgh) so I dug around the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette archives one day to uncover an obituary for my third great grandmother. Her daughter, my grandmother's great aunt helped raise my grandmother after my great grandmother died young. She always said that this aunt was Irish but she was born and raised in the US but what made the obituary so fascinating is that it revealed that the aunt's mother (the aforementioned third great grandmother) spoke only Irish and she lived in the US for over 50 years. So I think my grandmother assumed her aunt was Irish since she probably spoke English with a pronounced brogue given that both parents were Gaelic speakers from Mayo. I am still hoping that one day I can find out if they had any siblings or not that came to the US.

[Sylvia C]

Anne, what a great find!

[Darksecretz]

Brilliant Anne!

gives me some hope for my Ann Larkin/s then!

[Olde Crone Holden]

I'm wondering about the surname Sletcher. I think it's more likely it was Fletcher, at least originally. A sloppily written F might look like an S. A look at the original church records might clarify this.

OC

[JBee]

When looking in newspapers sometimes its worthwhile not putting a name in the box.

Having received a death certificate I wanted to find if there was an inquest etc. Didn't find it initially under a name search but did under the date.

However my biggest recent find was my uncle - I'd looked before but found nothing.

I knew he had fought in the Spanish Civil War but nothing else. I found out he was a prisoner of war and was one of the last to be released in Feb 1939. He'd told his mother he was going away for a while but didn't say where. She only found out when she was notified he was a prisoner. Looking at other newspaper reports of other prisoners that were released with him I found the British Government had given them a good meal on their release in France.

[Anne in Carlisle]

It may have been Fletcher originally OC but the GRO index and two different newspapers report it as Sletcher. There's quite a few of them in Bedfordshire.

As a followup to my original post, I later found a report of this couple's Golden Wedding anniversary. In it was mentioned (again!!) that they were the first to marry in the Chapel under the new Marriage Act. Famous in their time! They were just ordinary people ... not posh. However they did have a relative who worked on the Beds Times. Obviously it helps to know people in the right places!
Anne