THORNBER MARRIAGE RECORDS IN PARISH REGISTERS
IN LANCASHIRE, ENGLAND TO 1850

Not yet included are Burnley St Andrew, Clitheroe, & Padiham.  The information is drawn from volumes of the Lancashire Parish Register Society transcripts, inspection of registers and microfilms at Lancashire County Record Office and the International Genealogical Index (IGI), which covers marriages but not burials.

BE WARNED!   This listing is not complete because many of the parish register transcripts go only to 1812.  The IGI sometimes indexes up to 1837, when general registration began, but in cases where it goes beyond 1837 I have included entries up to 1850.  The IGI is on average only 50% complete for England.  Even for registers that have been indexed, the IGI does not necessarily cover all time periods for which the registers exist.  In some cases the IGI is based on the bishops' transcripts not on the original register.  Cover for Blackburn St. Mary is particularly poor in the IGI.  In a few cases I have gone beyond 1850 where the records came readily to hand but after this period it is best to consult the General Registration Office index, where some Thornber entries are shown elsewhere on this site.

This table is intended to be only a signpost to further research. In particular, there may be missing entries for Thornber brides as my earliest work concentrated on the marriages of Thornber grooms. The table includes some entries from Tony Foster's listing of Blackburn St. Mary marriages in the 18th century as indicated by the initials GAF (George Anthony Foster).  Entries for Blackburn have also been checked on a website covering events from 1786 to 1812 at Blackburn St. Mary but the site is no longer available. However, there is now the Lancashire Online Parish Clerk site

Entries have been abstracted from the South Blackburn Marriage Index, 1837 to 1851, prepared by Melvyn Hirst, 1999 and available at the Lancashire County Record Office. Merle Thornber in Australia has kindly provided me with the Thornber records abstracted from LDS films #1278807 and 1278808 covering Blackburn St. Mary from 1789 to 1854 and for St. Pauls in Blackburn from 1854 to 1900. For these Merle provided full details of the witnesses. The records were identified initially using the Rev. Rishton's manuscript index which shows only surnames and years and then located in the appropriate year on the film of the register.

Thornborough variants are included here because of the frequent confusion of between the variants in different documents for the Blackburn area. It is known that in some cases the same family were noted under both variants. For example James Ellison Thornborough, marrying in 1827, is probably the son of James Thornber and Mary Ellison marrying in 1789.

Items abstracted from Boyd's Marriage Index for Lancashire, which gives only the year, are noted with the abbreviation Boyd. These normally give an abbreviated Christian name. Some marriages after 1850 have been culled from Vital Records Index, which does not always give the name of the church or chapel but they can be checked against the Registration records on Free BMD.

Marriages are sorted by place then by date but you can use the "find on this page" facility in Netscape, Firefox or Internet Explorer to find Christian names of interest. Note that an "x" between Christian and surname indicates that the person made their mark instead of signing their name in the register; such records come from my examination of the original register or film. Other abbreviations are otc. for of this chapelry and spr. for spinster. Where I have examined the original records, marriages are by banns unless stated to be by licence.

* The full details from the register were provided by Bernard Steele

Link to Thornber Baptism Records in Lancashire: Parishes A to L
Link to Thornber Baptism Records in Lancashire: Parishes M to W
Link to Thornber Burial Records in Lancashire

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