RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => Topic started by: MJSJ on Monday 07 September 09 14:03 BST (UK)
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Hi,
Can anyone advise me please?
I have a birth certificate from the 1930s. The child has the same surname as the father and it would appear that the parents were married. I also have the mother's maiden name. However I cannot find record of a marriage between the parents. I've looked on ancestry. Is it possible that they lied on the birth certificate? Has anyone come across anything similar perhaps. I've no reason to believe that they would have married overseas, but wondered about doing a check. I've checked Ireland, but not Scotland or any other countries. One of the surnames is quite unusual so shouldn't be too hard to find if it does occur but I don't know where to look. Any advice welcome. Many thanks for reading this.
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Hi,
I have birth certificates for my grandfather and his 9 siblings and they all show the parents as married but I found out from an elderly second cousin that my gt.grandparents never married. ::)
I'd spent years looking for their marriage..........
It's not unusual.
Nanny Jan
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Can you give us the surname & MMN , Year & registration district
That may be enough to come up with some scenarios without revealing first names etc
Pauline
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yes more than usual for couples to claim they were married,
ie the woman takes the mans name, maybe check other childrens certificates to confirm they give same info, or do you know they stayed together? if not check for her marrying later etc etc
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There are many possibilities.
Firstly, quite common is mistranscription of one or both names of marriage partners on the original records or when transferring to the national index.
A second possibility is that this one of the (more than a few) marriages that did not get transferred to the national registers.
Another is that the mother married as a widow and so under the name of her first husband.
Do you have certificates or have you located index references for the births of all the children in the family? This might indicate when to expect that the marriage might have occurred. If they stayed in much the same place over the years (and especially if both came from that district originally) you might find the marriage through the local register office.
And there is always the possibility that they did not marry, either by choice or because one or other party had a pre-existing marriage.
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If the child was the youngest, then the marriage could have been earlier than you thought.
Kooky
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My grandmothers took her (eventual) husbands surname before they were married. All the childrens births (from 1939 on) were registered as if they were married, i.e. she had his surname with her maiden name listed. They didn't marry for 16 years after their first child (which was 5 years after the last child was born) becasue he was already married. It took me quite a few years to find that info!