John Roelofson

MS248 reel 1, Vol. 2, Page 3.
Brock District Marriages

Extracted from:
A list of marriages solemnized by me William Bird a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Upper Canada in the Brock District for the year of our Lord 1840

John Ralafsan of Beverly in the Gore District and
Mercy Templeton of Dumfries in the Gore District
On June 11th, 1840
License or notice: The usual notice - apparently the reading of banns.
Witnesses Richard Will and Daniel Templeton.

The Brock District was (mostly) what later became Oxford County. Rev. Bird may well have married John and Mercy in Brock, but he may as easily have married them in the Gore District and recorded the marriage in Brock. Had he submitted the registration to the registrar of the Gore District it is unlikely that this record would have survived. The Gore registration book begins in 1843. It is believed that there was an earlier one which is now lost to us.

Rev. Wm. Bird was born in County Fermanagh in Ireland in 1811. He apparently came to Canada prior to 1833. Vol. 12 of Obituaries from the Christian Guardian, Donald A, McKenzie, Global Heritage Press, tells us that he was sent as a supply to Nelson and Dumfries in 1836. His later years were spent in the Belleville area and he died in 1896. That the marriage was recorded in the Brock District marriage register may well indicate that the marriage was indeed held there (this is mostly present day Oxford County), though it is also possible that the marriage was held in Dumfries and got recorded in the Brock record.

The only other matter of note is that John's surname Roelofson has been transcribed from this record quite variously. The handwriting in the record will be that of the registration clerk, who in turn was reading the clergyman's handwriting. The Roelofson family always had a difficult time of it in this regard.