How do I know this record contains marriage information?
I am reviewing marriage index records, and don't understand the batch I just received. It has a man's name and a woman's name followed by "of this P.{arrish?}" and three lines of text with 3 weeks dates of the same day of the week followed by R. Moss {presumably the bishop or cardinal for the parrish?}. I don't understand how we are to know that these are marriage date records, and I don't know which of the dates would be considered the marriage date, first, middle, or last? There are day and month data, but no year data. There also is no record of what page number or what county, city, state, etc. Here is a sample picture:
I am planning to return the batch as no recordable information for the following reasons:
1) No year data
2) Ambiguous recordable event (birth, christening, marriage, death??) Presumably marriage because man & woman named?
3) No form data - Handwritten notes in a notebook with minimal identifying markers (i.e. page number, year, parrish, witnesses, no typed information with blanks, etc.).
In your experience, does this make sense?
Answers
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In order for people to help you they really need to see your batch. Can you share the code (click on the Help button at the top when you have the batch open and select Share Batch from the drop down list, copy the code and post it on here).
My best guess would be that these are the dates for Banns, called on three occasions before the marriage can go ahead. There is data there so it probably shouldn't be returned as No Extractable Data (unless the Project Instructions say so).
It will make sense to the people who process the records after indexing and who will be able to see where it sits in relation to the rest of the project.
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