Discover your British ancestor from South West England today. Explore more than 350,000 records of marriages from 1578 to 1939. Search the records by both your ancestor’s name and a spouse name to help narrow down your search. Included in the records is the marriage of Elias Leach and Elsie Kingdom, parents of Archibald Leach, also known as the famous Cary Grant.
Each record includes a transcript of the original records. The amount of detail found in each record can vary, but most will include:
Name
Sex
Marital status
Marriage date
Marriage place
Father’s name
Spouse’s name
Spouse’s sex and marital status
Spouse’s father’s name
County and country
This collection of baptism records from Bristol comprise transcripts created by Findmypast using the original records held at the Bristol Archives and transcripts from FamilySearch’s International Genealogical Index (IGI). The city of Bristol is 120 miles from London and rests near the Avon and Frome rivers. Its location was perfect for maritime trade with Ireland, Wales, France, Portugal and America. The city prospered through trade and the industrial revolution.
The records include 12,138 marriages from St. Mary Redcliffe Church, which is the tallest building in Bristol. The church was built between the 12th and 15th centuries. Today, it is a listed building. The church includes many monuments to people from the city’s history, including a monument to William Penn, the founder of the American state of Pennsylvania. It also displays the rib of a whale brought back to Bristol by John Cabot. Today the masterpiece of Gothic architecture welcomes thousands of visitors.
In the Gloucestershire, Bristol marriage index we have found the marriage of Elias Leach and Elsie Kingdom in 1898, parents of the Bristol born actor Cary Grant. The record also gives the names of the couple’s fathers, William Kingdom and John Leach, who would be Cary Grant’s grandfathers. Grant was born in Bristol in 1904 and baptised as Archibald Alexander Leach. It was not until he moved to Hollywood to make feature films that he changed his name to Cary Grant. His family continued to reside in Bristol after he left. Cary Grant is known as the quintessential leading man. His most famous role was in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, but Grant starred in over 60 films throughout his 34 years in Hollywood films.