Harry & Betsy Garner's marriage certificate: (LH part - see adjoining graphic for RH portion).

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Harry & Betsy's marriage ctfct_0001

Harry and Betsy Garner are my (Phil’s) wife Ruth (Garner.Archer)’s paternal grandparents, whom she never knew, because they died in about 1947 before she was old enough to know them as grandparents. Here they are, marrying in 1902, the year that my grandpa William George Reed Archer married Elizabeth Emma Gilder at Walton Street Methodist chapel in Oxford. They married at Radcliffe Bridge Welseyan Chapel, the very place where, 44 years and 14 days later, their grand-daughter Ruth would marry Philip the son of an Oxford removals contractor. Forty years later in 1942 their son Samuel married Nancy Philpotts there also. In 1902, Harry Garner was 29 years old and was a newsagent at 81 Church Street, Radcliffe. He had never joined the Lancashire cotton-industry, but his bride, Betsy Pickstone, aged 30 years, was indeed a Cotton Weaver, no doubt working at one of the local Radcliffe cotton mills, none of which were in operation 44 years later when their grand-daughter married.

And (famous family fact), the ‘brother-and-sister married sister-and-brother’ details are clearly shown on this one certificate, because it is the bride and groom (Betsy Pickstone and Harry Garner)’s brother and sister (respectively: Harry Pickstone and Edith Garner who are the witnesses to this marriage. See also the caption to the RH portion of the certificate. (Added later): No, I’ve got that wrong. I have checked with Ruth, and it was Mark Pickstone who married Harry Garner’s sister (Edith presumably).(14.4.2016)


qaa© Philip B Archer 2014