John KERR and Mary BOICE/BOYCE

Julie-Ann,

The record that you have found is a Church of Ireland (ie  Anglican or Episcopalian) index to marriages in the Diocese of Armagh. Ireland is divided into 12 Dioceses, and I have attached  a link showing you the geographic area covered by Armagh:

https://www.ireland.anglican.org/find-a-church/diocese/armagh

The City of Armagh is where the Bishop of Armagh is located, and so gives the diocese its name. However, in addition to Co Armagh, it includes parts of Counties Londonderry, Tyrone, Down and Louth. So your couple may not necessarily have lived in Co Armagh. They may have lived anywhere within the Diocese catchment area. There are around 43 parishes in the diocese. Some of those have more than one church. So potentially there are up to 50 or 60 sets of records to search through, though not all still exist.

Finding them may be tricky.  About 40% of the Church of Ireland marriage records for the period you are looking at  - say 1815 to 1825 - were lost in the 1922 fire in Dublin and not all of what survived is on-line. You could try searching some of the pay to view/subscription sites such as rootsireland which has a lot of church records (but by no means all). In many cases if a church does still have records for that period, they tend to be kept in PRONI (the public record office in Belfast) or the Representative Church Body (RCB) library in Dublin. Some are also copied in the National Archives in Dublin. For all of those locations a personal visit is required to view them, but without some idea of which parish the couple lived in, it’s a bit of needle in a haystack. Searching all the surviving marriage records for a 10 year period would take some time.

Unless the marriage is on rootsireland, or you can get some idea from Scottish or other records as to where the couple lived in Ireland (ie a parish or townland) then it’s going to be a long haul.

Having said that, people didn’t move around that much, and so the chances are that Mary probably married John Burns in the same general area as she married her first husband. So one might lead to the other. John & Mary Burns are nightmare names to search though. Looking at the 1901 census of Ireland there were 577 people named John Burns and 783 named Mary Burns.  That’s how common both names were. Do you have any clues as to John Burns occupation or when he and Mary died? For example, birth, marriage & death registration started in Scotland in 1855. So if James ended up in Scotland and married or died from 1855 onwards, the Scottish certificates should tell you whether his mother was still alive. (It’ll say deceased/dcd if she was dead. If it says nothing then she was alive). And though his own father was obviously already dead, it may give his occupation. That can sometimes help narrow the search.

Check every Scottish census that James appears in. (The earliest is 1841. They are on the Scotlandspeople site). Though usually it just gives place of birth as Ireland, sometimes more is given, especially in the 1911, if he happened to still be alive then.

If you think James might ever have claimed under the Poor Law (the equivalent of todays social security system), then his file will often record where he was born in Ireland, together with any next of kin. You haven’t said where in Scotland he lived but if it was the Glasgow area, then the poor law records are in the Mitchell library. They will do a look up for a small fee:

http://www.glasgowfamilyhistory.org.uk/ExploreRecords/Pages/Poor-Law.as…

It’s worth checking obituaries, gravestones and wills in case there is any mention of James’ relatives in Ireland or place of origin in Ireland.

DNA testing might also throw up some possible links, I suppose.

Hello Elwyn :) Thank you very much for the comprehensive explaination..It makes sense as ive seen references to this family in Dungannon Tyrone as yet unverified tho.

Ive also seen reference to Mary & John Burns both desceased early 1850s in Larnark Sct but have not found them in indexes yet

No sign of James death 1834 Tyrone either

Thank you again for the leads i will follow up

regards

Julie-Ann

Death registration only started in Scotland in 1855, so if they died there prior to that year there may not be any record of it. But they could be in the 1851 Scottish census which may narrow the search a little.