Help needed: transcription of marriage record for Robert Pearce

O

Oz Faremeister

Well-Known Member
Hi there, I have had a go at transcribing this ?1862 St George Anglican Church, Montreal, Quebec, Canada marriage record myself, but I am having trouble with some of the handwriting. I would welcome some more expert attempts!

Someone sent this record to me, I suspect the original record may be on Ancestry.com

My preliminary trancription is “Robert Pearce of the fifteenth Company of Her Majesty Royal Engineers, Bachelor and Mary ?Meredith, illegible the late James Norman of the City of illegible, illegible married by accent on the illegible day of September this One illegible Eight Hundred illegible two”

nb: other records suggest it should be the Fourteenth Company of Her Majestys Royal Engineers
 

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Is Mary of Montreal? If it is then her second name doesn’t look like it starts with an M, rather an E. Elizabeth? The start of ‘Montreal’ is the same as the M Her Majestys Royal.
Mary Eliza (and?) the widow of the late James Norman
 
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The image is on Ancestry in the Drouin Collection of Quebec Vital and Church Records, but it is no clearer than the image you posted. Also on Ancestry, there is a link to a marriage transcription held at the National Library and Archives of Quebec.
Code: 
https://applications.banq.qc.ca/apex/f?p=113:11:0::NO::P11_CLE:14664
The only details the transcription gives is -
Spouse - Robert Pearce
Wife Name - Mary Ethrington
Year - 1862
Church - St George's Anglican Church (Montreal)

I think that on the record you posted, you can make out that Robert's wife's name is 'Mary Ethrington widow of the late James Norman' :)
 
So putting that all together the suggested transcription seems to be "Robert Pearce of the fourteenth (or fifteenth) Company of Her Majesty Royal Engineers, Bachelor and Mary Etherington, widow of the late James Norman (or Normand) of the City of Montreal, were married by licence on the the seventh day of September One Thousand Eight Hundred Six Two”.

I shall pass that on to my collaborators and see if anything comes of that.
 
The interesting thing about Robert Pearce is that his descendant Robert Waddell of Canada has a DNA match to a descendant of John Meredith and Selina Keeley in the UK and several DNA matches to the descendants of John Meredith's younger brother James Frederick Meredith and Margaret Priscilla Robertson in Victoria, Australia. We are inclined to think the most likely candidate to link this puzzle is if their sibling Mary Meredith married Robert Pearce in Canada and their son was William D Pearce (1863-1941). Robert and Mary appear to have had another son Thomas James Pearce (born 1860, baptised 1863). In both baptism records (which are on the same date and place) Robert William Pearce is from the 14th Company of Her Majesty's Royal Engineers and his wife's name is handwritten as Mary Meredith.

It is a bit perplexing at the moment, including that the D in William D Pearce appears to be Diamond, but his middle name is spelt Joseph in all of his childrens records. His gravestone on findagrave is inscribed William D Pearce, and the inscription of his wife and two of his children proves that he is the same person alternatively recorded as William Joseph Pearce.
 
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My collaborator found a third son where the baptism this time lists the mother as Mary Etherington, rather than Mary Meredith. So it seems most likely that Mary married a James Norman Etherington who died, leaving her a widow before she remarried to Robert Pearce and had three sons in Quebec named Robert Albert Pearce, Thomas James Pearce and William D Pearce. That explains why the middle name Norman appears in my collaborators tree.
 
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