by 
Gertrude Wigley is my great grandmother on the Garrison side. I have been trying for some time to confirm Gertrude’s birthday, but haven’t had much luck.
In a July 2011 post, The Ever-Elusive Gertrude Wigley, I detailed my frustration of attempting to find Gertrude’s birth certificate and/or any of her three marriage records. NJ Department of Vital Records had none of the records and the same was true for the City of Trenton. Even the NJ State archives couldn’t find Gertrude’s birth certificate. It is very odd that none of these agencies have any of the four documents!
A couple days ago I thought I solved the mystery, when I located the church record for Gertrude’s first marriage. On January 18, 1910 Gertrude married William Robert Dobbs in the Hamilton Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church, in Trenton, NJ. The church’s registry book of marriages and baptisms was recently made available on the Internet. However, the marriage entry is almost totally blank! All that is listed is the name of the bride and groom, place of residence (Trenton, NJ), date of the wedding and the reverend’s name. All the information that is useful to a genealogist is blank. Age, place of birth, occupation, parents and witness names were not completed. The same is true for the 10 other marriages listed on the same page of the register.
I believe Gertrude was born on January 18 in either 1892 or 1894. This marriage would have taken place on her 18th, or 16th birthday. If Gertrude was 18, then no parental consent would be required. January 18, 1910 happened to be a Tuesday, so was this a case of teenage rebellion? From a news article I know that less than four months after the wedding the two were living apart and eventually divorced.
As for the baptisms recorded in the book… the period of Gertrude’s birth is not recorded in this register. Baptisms from the late 1880s are recorded, as are those from the late 1890s. But as luck, or fate, would have it, the early 1890s are missing.
Knowing the exact date of Gertrude’s birth, in the grand scheme of my family’s genealogy, is not all that important. Nonetheless, I will keep looking.
