what does potential spouses mean on a marriage index

What you are seeing are all the spouses (Male and Female) that appear on a certain Page of a Certain Volume.  Find my Past doesn't know which spouse belongs with which one, so they list them as "potential" spouses.  You can however confirm which spouse is correct by going to Irish Family History Foundation at http://www.rootsireland.ie and using their search funtion (it is FREE to search) and entering the last name of each of the "potentials".  

Happy Hunting!

Kathy

The information you have been looking at is drawn from the indexes to civil marriages. There are several marriages on each page of the master register. So say 4 men married 4 women, each of those couples is on the same page of the register. All 8 individuals will therefore have the same reference number eg Dublin North, 1866 Volume 1, page 135. There?s no way of knowing from the indexes who married who. So all 4 partners are listed as potentials (obviously only 1 is right). Since you already know which one your ancestor married you can ignore the others. But in some cases the information can be useful in narrowing the search when you don?t know who they married.

many thanks to you  both for such a quick response. Lucky i did know my great grandfathers wife's name but i am trying to search for my great great grandfathers wife and their children. A bit more scrolling of pages i think is in store for me

Hi longlocks. Wondering if your BRIDGMANs came from the Kilcornan/Askeaton area? Mine did.

Although the system seems to be horrible when its this way but even this system can be severely advantageous for someone.

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