LIST 36 - MARRIAGES - ST MARYS SYDNEY

 
 
During this decade there were 523 marriages performed at St Marys, on average 
about one marriage every week.
 
The information recorded for each marriage is as follows:
 date
 groom 
 family name
 Christian name
 year and ship of arrival
 civil status at time of marriage
 age at marriage
 bride 
 family name
 Christian name
 year and ship of arrival
 civil status at time of marriage
 age at marriage
 comments
 officiating minister
 reference number
 
The marriages are listed in chronological order. In seventeen cases there 
was no date recorded so these records are collected at the end of the list 
in alphabetical order on the surname of the groom. Entries with only the year 
recorded are placed at the start of each year.
 
There were twenty six duplicate entries (*) and two triplicate entries (**).
 
In the original register the standard information recorded was; date, family 
name and Christian name of both bride and groom, the location where the ceremony 
took place and the officiating minister. Information in the register but 
not included here includes; names of the witnesses to the marriage and who 
gave consent to the marriage. Interested readers are urged to consult the 
originals.
 
Very occasionally; the place of birth, the ship of arrival (but not the year 
unfortunately) and regiment/occupation were also recorded.
 
When the Reverend John Joseph Therry arrived in the colony in 1820 there 
was of course no Catholic church building, his "church" was in effect his 
registers. Thus as he travelled around the colony performing marriages it is 
suspected that he recorded, the events and where they took place in his register, 
only later at the end of his particular travels, leading to occasional 
errors of person, date and place. The register gives a type of travel guide 
to his movements for his first couple of years in the colony. 
 
The Archives of St Mary's in Sydney contain two chronological indices of 
marriages, not dissimilar to the Kerrison James indices for the Church of 
England records. At this point in time it is not known who compiled these two 
indices or when or why. However with the copying and re-copying, transcription 
and re-transcription, errors have inevitably crept into the records, the most 
annoying of which is where witnesses to the wedding have been confused with 
the participants. The one marriage, recorded in the two indices and the 
original transcript, may have differing details in all three records, making 
the final analysis somewhat difficult and no doubt many errors still persist 
in these current efforts to create a definitive list.
 
As explained above the age at marriage is a derived figure except for one marriage 
conducted by Rev Conolly in January 1821.
 
The Rev Phillip Conolly assisted Rev Therry until he relocated to the Derwent 
in March 1821. When the Rev Daniel Power arrived in December 1826 he also 
assisted Rev Therry until his death in March 1830.
 
There does not appear to have been any coherent reference numbering system 
so the entries have been simply re-numbered consecutively. In this instance 
the numbers run from 017 to 539. 
 
Unlike the Anglican parishes, St Marys does not seem to have received the 
new printed register in 1826, or at least it has not been microfilmed.
 
To locate an entry on this list; firstly an alphabetical search on the name 
would be made on Lists 27 or 28 using code "SMS" from which the date of marriage 
would be retrieved, secondly using the appropriate date, the marriage would 
then be located on this list.

Proceed to Church Register

Return to 1821-1830

Return to Home Page

This work is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.