You have a large database of marriage records, but at present it’s only possible to search on the names of the bride or groom. Would it be possible to have a searchable list of marriage witnesses? This could help people with their brickwalls if they could see which families their rellies were possibly linked to. One would also be able to see if someone was a professional witness and avoid red herrings. Knowing which year someone was still active could also help to pinpoint a year of death or a move away from the parish. You already have the witness info, I think you would just need to upload a separate file which has revised search parameters?
I think its beyond our capabilities at this time to do what you are suggesting. Some of the problem is with the old/original coding. The person that built our site is no longer around and his coding is difficult to copy.
Heather, some of what you seem to want you can already achieve in FMP with their Parish marriages in the Civil Registration era. The witness info is there and the search engine is more versatile. The optional keyword function in the advanced search is very useful. Their records run to close to one million in the Sheffield area in that period. Our file, on the contrary. is extremely small, just over 2000, representing less than 0.4% of the total Sheffield area marriages in the same period. Even if what you ask could be mechanically achieved here, there would be no significant results because the population is so small.
Dave
Correction, our marriage certificate file is just over 1000, not 2000. Sorry, forgot that there are 2 people to each marriage, so needed to divide by 2.
Dave
I believe that we are talking about two different issues here.
We have a very large (will find out later how many) marriages that have been transcribed from the Parish Registers. No witnesses included.
I believe that the numbers quoted by Dave are the ones from the BMD's Certs where folks have been kind enough to add them from certificates that they have bought. Witnesses have been added.
Over the years I have sent many templates out for their information to be added. This was only when folks who had offered to add their stock of certificates to our database but very few have been returned.
We have to rely on you to fill in the template as time is limited to what Vicki and I can do as you can imagine.
I must admit my marriages are on line but not the births or deaths. It does take some time if you have a large number of them. Especially if you are a two finger typist as I am. LOL.
Please consider adding your information to this worthwhile project.
I apologize for my senior moment with my statement re the marriage witnesses not being transcribed.
We did indeed transcribe the witnesses for the marriages where they were entered in the registers. Where the issue arises is with our search capability for the database. Its old coding and when our webmaster has looked at it he feels its best to leave well enough alone.
Sorry about that I was getting confused with the godparent issue. Doesn't take much these days to confuse me LOL.