Spouse not Found

You may have reached this page because you have clicked on the Page Number in order to try to find possible spouses for an entry (as described here) but this facility was not available for the entry. The reason the facility is not available is that either or both of the Volume and Page were not readable when the index was transcribed. This is indicated by the presence of special characters in these fields as explained here.

Alternatively, you may have come to this page to find out how you can find a spouse where their name does not appear in the spouse search results.

How spouse searches work

The normal spouse search facility works by searching for entries for marriages with the same quarter, volume and page number as the original entry. You can do the same search manually by entering these values in the fields of a search, thus:

Type	Marriage
Date range	Set both start and end to the same as the original
Volume	Set to the same as the original
Page	Set to the same as the original

Choosing search values for your spouse search

The Type (i.e. Marriage) and start/end date should be set to the value of the original entry (i.e. then entry whose page number you clicked to get to this page). Select values for the Volume and Page as follows:

If the original entry has the symbol next to it then the scan from which the transcription was made is available. Click on the symbol to view the scan and see if you can make a better guess at the Volume and/or Page Number.
Try possible alternatives for the field. For example if the Page Number is shown as 5[38] this means that the page number could be 53 or 58, so you could try to do a search on both possible page numbers.
Use the Find Page Entries facility as described below
Limit the choices using information on valid volume numbers for the district. See here for information on volume numbers.
Limit the choices to valid page numbers if the information for the year, quarter and district is available here. (This information is only available when we have enough entries to determine the page range.)

Finding Page Entries

FreeBMD provides a means to find all the page numbers for a particular quarter and district and/or volume; the page numbers are shown together with the number of entries for each. Using this facility with the details (e.g. year, district, etc.) for the spouse you know about you can find all the possible pages that correspond. By examining this information you can determine the most likely alternative entries. For example, if the spouse you know about is on page 21 and you find that there is an entry for page 2_ there is a possibility that your missing spouse will be on that page. Another clue would be pages with, for example, 9 entries; at least one of these must be on the wrong page, so could one of these entries be your missing spouse? To use the Find Page Entries facility click here.

Meaning of special characters

The following characters are used where the index is difficult to read:

`_` (Underscore)	A single uncertain character. It could be anything but is definitely one character. It can be repeated for each uncertain character.
`*` (Asterisk)	Several adjacent uncertain characters. A single `` is used when there are 1 or more adjacent uncertain characters. It is not used immediately before or after a `_` or another ``. Note: If it is clear there is a space, then `* *` is used to represent 2 words, neither of which can be read.
`[abc]`	A single character that could be any one of the contained characters and only those characters. There must be at least two characters between the brackets. For example, `[79]` would mean either a `7` or a `9`, whereas `[C_]` would mean a `C` or some other character.
`{min,max}`	Repeat count - the preceding character occurs somewhere between min and max times. max may be omitted, meaning there is no upper limit. So `_{1,}` would be equivalent to `*`, and `_{0,1}` means that it is unclear if there is any character. Ensure the complete field is enclosed in quotes to avoid the comma being taken as a field separator, e.g. "williams{0,1}".
`?` (Question mark)	Only used where it is unambiguous that there are no characters in the column, e.g a missing Volume. The question mark must be the only character in the column. Note: If it is unclear whether the column is empty or not `_{0,1}` is used.

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