The < > - commonly called "angle brackets" - are used by transcriptionists and data encoders to indicate estimated information.  Estimated information can be surnames, Christian names, dates and/or places.  Consequently, any search of a surname without the angle brackets enclosing it will return all of the entries for the surname including those that have the angle brackets.

Using the angle brackets around a surname with the 'exact spelling' box checked will return only those entries that have been encoded with the angle brackets.  This is why it does not work if you do not check the 'exact spelling' box.  When you check that box you are literally asking the site to return to you only those entries that are spelled exactly as "<surname>", including all non-alphabetic characters.

Lastly, as with all transcription and indexing projects there are some volunteers that will take their instructions a little too literally or, conversely, not literally enough.  As we all know, parish registers very seldom include the surname of the child with the child's Christian name(s).  Same goes for birth registrations.    Estimated information may have been required as there may have been damage to a page or pages of certain records.  Consequently, in absolute literal terms, we are always only assuming that a child bears the same surname as his or her parents.  This is what has happened during the indexing process and some of the transcriptionists have extracted every child's surname as being estimated information.  Hence the proliferation of angle brackets on the IGI index in relation to entries from some parishes.  Furthermore, FamilySearch is not designed to accept or understand Boolean logic search terms - it is simply a very literal search facility.

I hope this sheds a little more light on the mysterious IGI and Family Search web site.

1.  First, you must have the description of the reference record as published by the Family History Society.  From the information below, you can see that their census index includes the whole of Bromley Registration District, as opposed to simply the parish of Bromley.  In the description, the RG piece number is also given, namely RG1606.

Vol. I  - Bromley Registration District RG piece number 1606 - includes the parishes of Beckenham, Bromley, Chelsfield, Chislehurst, Cudham, Downe, Farnborough, Foots Cray, Hayes, Keston, Knockholt, North Cray, Orpington, St. Mary Cray, St Paul's Cray, West Wickham and contains 18,000 entries.

2.  Armed with the description, go to the Family History Library catalogue and do a Place Search for Bromley.  That listing will give you the LDS film number for the Bromley census plus the page numbers - not to be confused with the folio numbers.

3.  Next, go back to the beginning of the catalogue search and do a Film/Fiche Call Number Search putting in the film number returned in step 2, above, namely 0193505.  The first listing that you will see in the search results is the list for the whole of England 1851 census.  Click on that link and then be patient as you wade through all of the census film numbers until you find the listings for Kent.  Under the Kent listing the following entry was found:

[RG] Piece no. 1606: Bromley (folio nos. 1-308); Chislehurst (folio nos. 309-567).  FHL BRITISH Film 193505

4.  Conclusion:  It appears that your family was actually in Chislehurst.  From the film description above, note that Chislehurst is covered on folios numbered 309 through 567.  You will find your family on folio number 504a (the 'a' indicating the distinction between the recto and verso of a page) on LDS film number 0193505.  The remainder of the areas within the Bromley registration district appear on successive films.

Happy hunting.

1.  written permission to film the record; and,

2.  written permission to copy and circulate that same record

from the original creator thereof.  In the case of English church registers the owner is generally the Diocese.

In many instances, for the sake of record preservation, record owners will grant the LDS permission to film but not necessarily permission to copy and circulate a particular record.  Accordingly, you will find some films and microfiche available for consultation at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, but not available for distribution to a Family History Centre.  

For example, restrictions have been placed on the Catholic church registers of Germany.  Those can be copied and circulated to any place in the world - except Germany.  There are also a number of Australian immigration records that cannot be circulated to Australia.

Some of the reasons for restricting circulation are

A.  the record owner's previous agreements with other institutions or groups whereby copyright privileges may have been granted to that other entity for reproduction and sale of the information;

B.  reasons of maintaining privacy or confidentiality, within their own defined parameters, of any living person named therein; and/or,

C.  legislation currently in place that prohibits the release of information of individuals within a certain period of years following a specified event.  In Canada we have this last problem.  The LDS has a copy of our own Ontario civil registration index well into the 'closed' period but no one, under any circumstances, is permitted access to it due to the legislated privacy period.

In summary, the permission to copy and circulate a film rests with the original creator of the record.  However, just out of curiosity, I searched the LDS catalogue for the Dartford register and I found an answer that will slice straight to the heart of the matter.  I bet that the register you are interested in is this one:

The parish registers of Dartford, Kent, 1561-1812 FHL BRITISH Library Attendants' Window microfiche #6341224

If it is, notice who the record creator is:

Canterbury, Kent : Kent Family History Society, c1985
Physical 17 microfiches.
Edition Microfiche ed
ISBN/ISSN 03089037

1.  The Cathedral at Manchester is not named St. Mary's.  St. Mary's church is a separate entity.

2.  Cathedral marriages for the period 1821 through 1823 are under batch number M005466, not batch number M005467.  The marriages are on LDS film Number 0438192 - always check the original source.  The I.G.I. is an index only and each entry has gone through at least three sets of hands before it arrives for data processing, leaving many opportunities for errors to occur.

3.  St. Mary's Church marriages 1806 through 1837 are on the IGI under batch number M005371.

4.  The above marriages were taken from a transcript of the parish register - not the original parish register - as follows:  (from the LDS FHLC)

Parish register transcript, St. Mary's Church, Manchester, Lancashire, England.  Authors Church of England. St. Mary's Church (Manchester, Lancashire) (Main Author) Norman, Bertram William Tuff, 1880-1959 (Added Author).  Note Location British Film  #0924243 Items 1-2 - Vols. 1-2.

Naturally, any transcript leaves wide open the possibility of missed entries, mistranscription of an entry - particularly of surnames, et cetera.  Always consult the original record - do not rely on transcripts.

5.  St. Mary's Bishop's Transcripts Marriages, 1806 through 1824 can be found on FHL BRITISH Film #1545641 Item 1.  Unfortunately, the entries on this film have not been extracted and, therefor, are not entered on the I.G.I..  Bishop's Transcripts, although produced within one year of the earliest entry for that past year, are still transcripts, nonetheless, and entries may well have been missed.

6.  The original parish registers for St. Mary's, Manchester, which are the records that you really should examine, can be found on the following films, none of which have been extracted and are, therefor, not entered on the I.G.I.:

• Baptisms, 1756-1888. Burials, 1754-1871 (includes memorandums at end of register). FHL BRITISH Film 2113144
  
• Marriages, 1806-Dec. 1833. FHL BRITISH Film 2113145
  
• Marriages, Jan. 1834-Dec. 1849. FHL BRITISH Film 2113146
  
• Marriages, Jan. 1850-Mar. 1866. FHL BRITISH Film 2113147
  
• Marriages, Mar. 1866-Nov. 1888. FHL BRITISH Film 2113148
  

7.  Perhaps your grandparents married at another church.

I hope the above points help to clarify your lack of finding the marriage of your grandparents and have given you a few leads to follow up.  Good luck in your continued search.

I take it that, when you double-clicked the film number on the full entry it took you to the screen that says what type of film it was.  If that is the case, then a lot depends on what year the endowments were done.

If the endowments were performed during the period 1920 through 1960 there just may be the name of the proxy and heir included with the endowment entry.  But, you have to be careful as there may only be the name of one proxy at the top of a list of endowments of people that have no relationship to the family.  This resulted when a church member did not, or could not, attend the temple to perform the ordinances personally.  A proxy was appointed in their place.  Also, from the films of ordinances that I have examined, it seems that Salt Lake did not have one specific form for recording the endowments once they were done - it varied every few years.  Also, every temple seems to have sent the information to Salt Lake compiled in a slightly different manner.

As you get into the ordinances that were performed prior to the 1920s as well as after the 1960s there is less and less information that can be tied to an heir - a member of the family.

Lastly, and sometimes the most disappointing of all is the fact that a member of the church was able to have ordinances performed for, shall we say, close family friends who were not members of the church.  I am not sure how they swung this, but I have ordinances performed by a Phyllis Gransden for my Duncan family of Faversham, Kent.  Phyllis had the ordinances performed at Salt Lake City temple a few years after Lizzie Duncan died at Faversham, Kent in 1924.  I do know that the Duncans were members of the LDS church back in the 1840s - were disavowed, then reinstated some 20 years later - then disavowed again and that some of Lizzie's children emigrated to "America".  But, not one of them would have been Phyllis Gransden so where she fits in is anybody's guess, other than to say that she must have been a friend of Lizzie's.

The short answer is, though, that Salt Lake is no longer accepting corrections to Ancestral File or the IGI.  The entry into the IGI is conjoined with temple ordinances and there is no process by which temple ordinances can be undone.  Hence an impossibility of removing any incorrect or duplicate entries from the IGI.

What you can do is resubmit the correct information to familysearch.org via their online sharing facility known as the Pedigree Resource File.  The church also no longer accepts IGI submissions until the individual to be entered has had ordinances performed at a local temple.  If you are not a member of the Church you would have to ask the Bishop of a local Church if he could arrange to have the temple work performed on your behalf by one of the members of that Church.

Now, for the more complete answer:  There are 3 avenues through which entries arrive at the IGI and each of those avenues determine the submitter and the likelihood of contact with the submitter.

1.  extracted original records, such as is the case for Winchester K136744 and St. Peter Sheffield C007752 entries;

2.  membership records prepared and maintained by the Church for and concerning each of its' many millions of members, worldwide; and,

The second thing to realize is that even though a batch number has/had been assigned to a resource and that resource was/is being extracted it doesn't necessarily follow that the batch number will yet be active on the IGI.  The numbers only activate at such time as the resource's computer index has been processed and entered in the IGI database and this, of course, doesn't occur until all temple ordinances have been performed.  Therein lies the real answer to your question - how to locate a batch number if it cannot be found on Hugh Wallis', or some similar, web site.

If the name and address of a submitter was obtained it was likely taken from either the Ancestral File or the Pedigree Resource File.  Any member of the public can view this same information without the necessity of being a member of the Church or having to enter a special PIN or identity number.  If the name and address of the submitter was obtained from either of these two sources after a member entered his or her PIN number, then I would have to conjecture that the member did not fully understand the working mechanisms of the familysearch.org website and was labouring under the impression that they had to enter their identity in order to access the information.

What the Church members do have access to that is different from the general public is the ordinance index.  From the ordinance index one can obtain the name of the temple at which an ordinance was performed for an IGI submission and the date on which the ordinance was performed.  He or she might also be able, in some rare instances, to access the name of the proxy or heir that attended at the temple to perform the ordinances.  Just be aware that proxies and heirs may or may not have any consanguineous relationship to the subject of the IGI entry.

In very rare instances, where there is a Family History Centre tied to a local temple and the Church member was a temple-recommend holder, he or she may have been able to access the original data that was submitted to the temple on disk.  This, though, I would think would constitute a breach of the privacy that Salt Lake wishes to maintain on behalf of submitters post-1991.  Otherwise, I'm afraid that there is no 'magic' formula for accessing a submitter's information through a Church member.