Possible Marriage Record for Mary Jane or Mary Ann Hall

While I was searching for the Hall family members on Ancestry.com I found a marriage record for a Mary Hall who married a James Grewer on 1 Dec 1839 at St. Philips, Liverpool, Lancashire, England. Mary's father was listed as Robert Hall, a shoemaker, and who was dead at the time of her marriage.[1] This information matched up with our Robert Hall since he had been a cordwainer (shoemaker) and had supposedly died in 1828, more than a decade before this marriage. The piece of information that lends more  support to the possibility of this being a record for either Mary Ann or Mary Jane is that one of the witnesses was a Thomas Hall!

Ancestry.com Marriage Record for Mary Hall and James Grewer

Here is the trick, we have two Thomas Hall's born to Robert and Elizabeth. We presume the first one had died before the second, which is why the name would be used again, though I have not been able to verify that assumption. If this witness was our Thomas Hall (1816) then this marriage would have been on the same day that the banns were read in Wales for the first time three weeks before Thomas' own marriage to Ann Hughes. Was it required that Thomas be present at the reading of the banns on the first week? Apparently the banns were read in both the husband's and wife's parishes, which may mean that it wasn't requisite for Thomas to be present in Wales on 1 Dec. 1839, but could have been in Liverpool for this marriage.

Another option is that this Thomas Hall, the witness, was an uncle or other relative to Mary. And still, another possibility is that this record does not belong to our family at all. I have been searching for them in the England censuses and so far have found no matches. I will continue to follow up this lead until I find evidence that this record is pertinent to our family or not.

If I were to make a guess at which Mary this record belonged to, I would think it was Mary Jane's. I have seen it listed that Mary Ann married a Thomas French, though I have not been able to verify that information. Mary Jane would have been about 26 and Mary Ann would have been 33. Considering the average ages at marriage around this time,I believe Mary Jane would have fit more with the trend.

[1] Church of England, St. Philips, 1 Dec 1839 marriage of Mary Hall and James Grewer, Ancestry.com accessed 17 March 2013.