In a book of Clifford Roy Wilmot's, he wrote that his parents, Albert & Mary, were married in St. Mark's Church in Barriefield. I have a copy of their marriage certificate and both Roy and his brother Ross were baptized as infants in this church. While in Kingston, it surprised my mom and I to find out that Albert & Mary were not listed in any of the the register books for the Anglican Diocese of the Anglican Churches in the area. This past week I emailed the Diocese Archives to ask if perhaps their marriage was not recorded in the book and I included a jpeg image of the scanned photocopy. Genealogy is nothing if not surprises.
The big revelation is that Albert and Mary were in fact not married in St. Mark's Church. The Anglican Diocese confirmed this using two reasons. The name of the "Officiating Minister" is A.B. Johnston. There is no such person who is listed in the Diocesan Clergy Register that has been in existence since 1862. The other reason is that on the certificate, there is nothing to say that they were married in St. Mark's Church. It doesn't say any other church either but it does look like they may have been married at a place called "Erie".
Along the bottom left the last sentence is "No. A247015 Registered at Barriefield" but this does not prove that they were married in Barriefield.
So, since they were both a couple kids from Pittsburgh Township born and raised, why did they not get married at the closet church? It's the church that the Wilmot's have been going to for generations and Mary's father was also one of the first confirmed members of the parish. In the book Courage, Faith and Love The History of St. Mark's Church by William J. Patterson, Albert and Mary are confirmed members.
The romantic in me wonders, "Did they elope"? The witnesses are William John Calvert (I've never heard of him) and S Agnes Wilmot. S Agnes is Albert's sister so if they eloped she knew about it and went with them.
I googled ERIE ONTARIO. There is a place called Fort Erie, Ontario, very close to the Niagra River. It's on the opposite end of Lake Ontario over 420 km's away from Kingston. Fort Erie was built in 1857 so it would have been in existence in 1897. It does, however, seem too far away to go and get married there.
I also googled ERIE NEW YORK since it would have been closer to cross the St. Lawrence River into New York and perhaps there is a place in New York called Erie, but the only Erie that came up there is south of Fort Erie, Ontario; no where near the St. Lawrence River.
My last google search was for A.B. Johnston. Apparently there was an A.B. Johnston on the ship the Titanic, but it's not really clear if he was able to perform marriages.... maybe the story is they eloped and were married by a man who later died in the sinking of the Titanic. Who was it that said, "Never spoil a story for the sake of the truth."
So now I suppose I will put a note out there on the Frontenac County mailing list from the rootsweb.ancestry.com website and see if anyone else out there can maybe point me in the direction of their marriage place.
My mom and I visited St. Mark's Church in Barriefield. It's a beautiful church, and we imagined what it must have been like on their wedding day... where they would have stood... who would have been in attendance... and we were wrong.
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