Part 674d – Brunhammer Doherty Genealogy – 1863 Marriage – GG-Grandparents Philip and Margaret Doherty – Wilmington, Delaware

Good Day,

A quiet day on the genealogy front…and the search keeps going on.

I have been working on the 4 January 1863 Marriage Registration of Andy’s gg-grandparents Philip and Margaret Doherty. I discovered an image of the page from Saint Peter’s Church, later Cathedral, in Wilmington, Delaware.

Here is the image of the page as downloaded from Item 4 of the microfilm FHL [1787872].

This is my transcription…

Januarius 1863

4th Phillippus & Margareta Doherty,
prius dispensatione obtentio a tertio
gradu Consanguinitatis ab Reverendissimis Domino
Jacobo F Wood - coram
me Matrimonuum inierunt
Testes fuerunt Gulielmus McGonnigee
& Catharina
P. R. O'Brien

Thanks to Lynn, Helen, Paul, and Kitty for assistance with the transcription of the Latin script.

Here is my translation...

January 1863

4th Philip and Margaret Doherty,
first having obtained a dispensation from the third
degree of consanguinity, of the Most Revered
Jacob F Wood - before
I took Marriage

The witnesses were William McGonnigee
and Catherine

P. R. O'Brien

Third degree of consanguinity would indicate gg-grandparents Philip and Margaret as 2nd Cousins.

I learned this about Degrees of Consanguinity at a site at Wikepedia.

"Religious and traditional law

In the Roman Catholic Church, unwittingly marrying a closely consanguineous blood relative is grounds for an annulment, but dispensations were granted, actually almost routinely (the Canon law of the Catholic Church banned marriages within the fourth degree of relationship [third cousins] from at least the year 1215). In the Canon Law system (as well as in the common law system), the degree of relationship is determined by counting the number of steps counted between each party to the common ancestor and taking the higher number of the two. The general rule was that while fourth cousins could marry without dispensation, those more closely related needed dispensation, with it becoming harder and harder to obtain the closer the couple were related."

And if I read this correctly then gg-grandparents Philip and Margaret may have had the same great-grandparents or Andy’s 4-times great-grandparents Doherty/Dougherty...

Any comments, questions, thoughts, and ideas, please contact me.

Enjoy,

Jim