Fearless Females: Grandparents' marriages

March 4 — Do you have marriage records for your grandparents or great-grandparents? Write a post about where they were married and when. Any family stories about the wedding day? Post a photo too if you have one.

Both sets of my grandparents were married in Edmonton, Alberta.  I had a few hours to spend at the Alberta Archives the last time I was in Edmonton in 1998 and I found it very difficult to search their records at that time.  I have no pictures of the weddings. The marriages were written up in a large register and I could not take copies.  I did find the following for my paternal grandparents:



Register of Marriages, Edmonton 87.385 510 Wm. D. Davies Lucey M. Crockete 10-11-13 691 - 23rd St. (Manse) Clergy -P. G. Stewart.

The picture is of my grandmother, Lucy Millicent Crockett, with my Dad, William Herbert Davies. My father was born April 11, 1914.  My grandfather was at war in Europe when this photograph was taken.  The first picture of my grandparents together is a family portrait taken about 1921.

William, Evelyn, Herbert (Bert) Lucy Davies

I do have a marriage Certificate for my maternal grandparents, transcribed below:

This is to Certify that on the 29th day of June in the year of our Lord 1912
John Bellamy and Vinetta Tremaine Butchart
were by me united in Marriage at the city of Edmonton according to the laws of Alberta.
Witnesses: W. D. Gardner, M. Moore
J. E. Hughson

 The clipping on the left is from the Edmonton Daily Bulletin dated July 3, 1912.  Granny's parents, Edward Neil Butchart and Maria Moyer, moved with their family from Bruce County, Ontario to Edmonton just about the same time Alberta became a province of the Dominion of Canada in 1905.

Edward Butchart, his brother, Peter E Butchart, and his cousin, Peter T Butchart were principals in The Great West Land Company which held many properties for development in the growing city.

The article states that the couple would be making their home in Vancouver, but to my knowledge they never lived there.  Their oldest child was born in Calgary on February 4, 1913.

Both of my grandparents' weddings were quiet affairs rather hastily planned, probably in view of the fact that the morals of the day required marriage before the birth of the first child.  My Dad came along five months after his parents were married and Uncle Bill was born seven months after the Bellamy wedding.  Both marriages lasted until the death of a spouse.