Ancestry challenge

They do appear to be initials and at first glance sort of correspond to the letter of the Index, for instance image 4 is letter A and the sets of initials do seem to have an A in each of them.
However, I can also see folio and page numbers in some of these images, therefore conclude the initials are an index to what is in the book.

 

The National Archives description says: "Fleet register: Officiating Ministers: Evans. Indexed in volume (alphabetically arranged under the man's forename)..."

I'm not sure I'm much the wiser yet in working it out but I can see that on the first page of marriages all the men have a forename beginning with A, moving on to the B forenames a few pages later.

 

OK, I think this might work. In the index pages the first letter is the man's surname initial, which is followed by his forename initial, and the next two initials relate to his bride.

The folio numbers are obscured, but the first of the 'C' marriages is Cadogan Simons and Mary Bower (I think) and the first initials in the 'C' index page are S.C.M.B.

Then we have Cornelius Lloyd & Esther Evans - L.C.E.E. and so on.

EDIT: The above works for the 'D' and 'E' forename marriages too, so I guess this may be the explanation.

 

I struck me as an odd way to order the marriages, and even odder way of creating an index to them. However, your challenge was only to work out what all the initials meant not to fathom out how the indexer's mind worked.

There do seem to be some pages missing from the book. Looking at image 63 and the start of the 'P' forenames, the handwritten page number is 119 (RH page) and from the bleed-through on the LH page I can see the previous RH page is 117. However, going back one to image 62, the RH page number is 109. From what I can see of the folio numbers, these also skip the missing pages - I can see page 121 is folio 58 and 109 is 56. So either the pages were missing before TNA added the folio numbers, or their numbering skipped the empty pages.

Perhaps there weren't any Owen or Oswald marriages and, looking further on, no Xerxes either.

 

I used the word index because you’d already used it, and because the TNA description refers to the book being indexed, although they may have been referring to the way the book was set out. However, whether these front pages are an index to the book itself or a summary of it or refer to something else, the letters themselves are initials of the brides and grooms from marriages in the book.

Yes - see my comment below.

Yes, I understood that and was agreeing that there were pages (or folios) missing, and my reference to the TNA folio numbers was indicating that the pages could have been missing when they added their numbers.

However, when I added the bit about the TNA numbering possibly skipping empty pages and my facetious comment about the names Owen, Oswald and Xerxes, I'd temporarily forgotten about the two 'O' entries in the "index" (or whatever it is).

 

I agree with Pauline.
I still think the initials are some form of indexing, it would take me a lot of time and patience to work it all out, I haven't got much of either

There is a table of contents in this book from the online library where I found my 2nd great grandmother's baptism. It might seem superfluous but it's obviously the way they did things.

As a matter of interest Peter, why did you 'throw this challenge' ?

Happy Easter, all.

 

Maybe it was a quick way for the minister to check if he had the record of a marriage for LC & EE before reading through the actual page to find it?

 

I've been doing some more browsing through this register, and while I haven't checked all of the letters, it does seem that the folio numbers given with the initials on the index pages correspond with the handwritten page numbers at the top of each page.

There are a couple of occasions where the entries for a particular forename initial start on the page before the number given, but those entries seem not to appear at the top of list of initials.

Using this logic, then the 'O' forenames should be on page 115, which is missing from these images. From the bleed-through I can see that pages 110 and 117 exist although they appear to be blank other than the page number. If pages 111-116 are missing (3 folios) then pages 110 and 117 will be there as facing pages, but for some reason TNA seem not to have added a stamped number on page 117 as we might expect - we can see their stamped 56 on page 109 and 58 on page 121, and possibly a 57 on page 119.

Anyway, missing pages and images aside, I think the pages of initials at the front are some kind of index or reference to marriages entered in the register.

 

There are other registers which are indexed but those I've seen previously are indexed more conventionally. Some registers are indexed in separate volumes while others are not indexed at all. The descriptions of these registers at TNA indicate which registers are 'indexed in volume' or if there is an index elsewhere.

The register in question here is described by TNA as 'indexed in volume' as I quoted in #4 so if you feel it is not an index then maybe you should ask them about it. It might not seem to us to be much use as an index, but then it wasn't created for our benefit.

 

Just adding an afterthought to my previous post. maybe the person/people who created this "index" didn't understand the instructions given to them!!