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General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: jksdelver on Tuesday 26 September 23 15:59 BST (UK)
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Just seen the subject on another thread
One thing doing that is you have got to get on well with the in-laws 😀😀😀
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Yes, I guess that does help. :D In my case I didn't have any as both hubby's parents were dead by the time I met him.
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Also on the flip side, one woman in my tree married her deceased husband's brother in 1806. I descend from another brother (of the 2 men), the one who was sent to Australia in 1791 for stealing a hog.
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I've researched someone who married his second wife's sister, in the days when it wasn't allowed.
It is only by examining the father's details that it becomes clear. She used her first husband's surname, completely forgetting about her second husband, who was still alive, and living about five miles away! :o
He then abandoned his "wife" number three and fled across the Atlantic with a woman from round the corner. ;D
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I've got another one:
James Archbell married Elizabeth Haigh in Leeds in 1818, and then the couple went to South Africa, where James was a Wesleyan Missionary. Elizabeth died in Pietermaritzburg in 1854.
I am told that James obtained dispensation to marry Elizabeth's sister, Sarah Ann Strickland (widow) in 1855.
Elizabeth and Sarah Ann are said to be the daughters of William Haigh of Leeds.
Perhaps I should do some more sleuthing!
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Doing a One-Place Study, I've found several of these!
The best one was a prominent local solicitor. His wife died in 1841. In 1843, he "married" his sister-in-law Sarah - and sent a notice to the newspapers
Northampton Mercury,
Saturday 1 July 1843
At Southampton, in November last, and subsequently in Scotland, Mr J H Sheppard of Towcester to Miss Sarah Gee
They must have gone away on "holiday", and come back "married". There was no marriage (unless they used aliases)
Ten years later, a prominent local businessman copied him:
Northampton Mercury
Sat 18 Dec 1852
On the 15th instant, in Scotland, Mr. John Webb, ironmonger, Towcester, to Maria Franklin, widow of the late Mr John G. Franklin, of Towcester aforesaid
;D ;D ;D ;D
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My fathers first wife dies whilst he was in the army during WW1. They had 3 very young children. The wifes youngest sister was looking after the children but could not continue as she had young children and about to give birth. The eldest unmarried daughter agreed to loo after the children but would not live in the same house as it 'was not done for a single women to live with a married man'. So he married the sister, at as told by those children a terrible wife and mother. She died. A few years later he married my mother but the children were grown and had children who we went to school with.
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I came across a local businessman who I think married his niece, though reasonably close in age. It was illegal here but they went to Switzerland to marry, c1930.
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I have an ancestor who married her dead husband’s brother …. and another who married her dead husband’s son (her step son).
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I have an ancestor who married her dead husband’s brother …. and another who married her dead husband’s son (her step son).
One of my relatives married his stepmother, but his father was still alive - he had never married her after divorcing his first wife, and marrying another (no idea what happened to her but she was the mother of this son), and then taking up with #3, by whom he had 5 children (he had a total of 12). Heaven knows what the various children thought of all this. I have traced all of them, except for that elusive second wife. (As his father and #3 had never married, I guess technically she was not his stepmother, and there was no impediment to their marriage.)
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…. What a tangled web Diana. In my example I’ve found several mentions of these family members in newspapers relating to children’s marriages and other events, obituaries etc, and they appear to have been fairly upstanding members of the community. It makes me wonder if people weren’t aware of the relationships, or if they just didn’t care, or maybe there was gossip behind the scenes. I would expect it to be frowned upon if known.
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…. What a tangled web Diana. In my example I’ve found several mentions of these family members in newspapers relating to children’s marriages and other events, obituaries etc, and they appear to have been fairly upstanding members of the community. It makes me wonder if people weren’t aware of the relationships, or if they just didn’t care, or maybe there was gossip behind the scenes. I would expect it to be frowned upon if known.
Yes, it makes for interesting research doesn’t it?
Oddly, when his third “wife” died, her daughter, the informant, listed her as the widow of John Metcalfe Pollard Sr. (the informant’s father) but she was actually the widow of John Leslie Pollard (the informant’s half-brother). Just to add to the confusion, John Sr. had a son named John Metcalfe Pollard Jr. From his first marriage).
For my research purposes it was rather fortunate that the 12 children left behind few descendants or I would be still untangling later generations!
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The length of the campaign to change the law on this was highlighted by this line in the 1882 Gilbert and Sullivan opera 'Iolanthe':
"He shall prick that annual blister, marriage with deceased wife's sister."
For details of the legal situation etc, see this article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deceased_Wife%27s_Sister%27s_Marriage_Act_1907
In instances I have come across, although the second marriages took place at some distance, the couples returned home afterwards. Their families and communities must have been well aware that the two wives were sisters. I don't think everyone disapproved, or even felt strongly about it.
Drosybont
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I've got a situation where one woman married two brothers, but tidily the first one had actually died. This was fudged on the 1911, where the second husband recorded that they had been married somewhat longer than they actually had to ensure that the children of the first marriage (who were of course legitimate) looked legitimate on paper!
My late mother also said that there was someone in the family who married his deceased wife's sister before it was legal and had to go to Australia as a result, but I haven't found him yet.
I suspect it was very common and no-one really cared.
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I agree that it was probably a non-event for most people, doesn't it have roots in a biblical ban?
Just remembered that I have three brothers who married three sisters in the early 20th century, and it was difficult sorting out which children belonged to which couple. Need to check the 1921 census to update this.
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I've seen this happen a few times in my and my husband's extended trees. Based on census records, it looks like the deceased woman's unmarried sister moved in to help the widower with his children, and at some point they got married. (This was in Canada or the US.)
I've also got a case where a woman's daughter died in 1921 (aged 35) and then the woman (aged 62) married her daughter's widower (aged 44) in 1930. The man's youngest children (her grandchildren) were about 9 and 10 years old in 1930. That woman died in 1949 and the man married two more times after that (the third wife died and the fourth survived him). (This was in the US.)
That was a really confusing situation to sort out, LOL. Picture me looking at the computer screen, eyes bugging out of my head, thinking, "What? That can't be... What? Who? Nooooooo..."
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I have a similar situation but without marriages involved.
Wife's unmarried sister came to stay with the sister and her husband presumably to look after the children during her confirment with her 3rd child in 1908.
In 1909 and again in 1910 the unmarried sister gave birth to 2 children openly acknowledged to be fathered by the brother in law. The married sister then gave birth to a further child in 1911.
No deaths or marriages - only births.
The married sister and her husband and their children were banished to Australia by the family who managed to find the fare. Other daughter was left here to bring up her two children on her own.
Pheno
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I have a rather unusual situation in my tree, in Western Australia. My g-g-aunt married (for the first time) in 1926 at the advanced age of 52. She lived for 13 more years, and ten years after her death her husband married her lifetime companion and rumoured half-sister, he being 82 years old and she 84.
Needless to say, neither marriage produced offspring.
Bev
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An ancestor of mine moved with her husband and baby to live in the US (Kansas). They became US citizens. My ancestor died at the birth of her second child and we think that her widowed husband sent an SOS to her family back in England, because her younger sister, mother and brother moved out to Kansas. Around a year after the death the sister married the widower and they raised a large family together. They became pillars of the community, so I guess that in the US in 1877 this was considered to be a sensible and acceptable kind of thing for the widower to do.
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I had one like this. It was a longtime mystery. The ages of a wife on the various censuses were inconsistent, she was initially known as Mary Ann, but later Maria, and Maria on her grave. This was duplicated on many Ancestry trees, until I eventually found that Mary Ann had died, the widowed husband had then married Mary Ann's kid sister, Maria. I got the various certificates and I wrote to all the 'wrong' trees on ancestry, got no replies, and nothing has been changed.
Zaph
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In instances I have come across, although the second marriages took place at some distance, the couples returned home afterwards. Their families and communities must have been well aware that the two wives were sisters. I don't think everyone disapproved, or even felt strongly about it.
My great-great grandparents avoided marrying while it was against church law, but did so before it became civil law. Harriet's first husband died in 1829, and she married his brother Richard in 1835. They had a child in 1831 who was baptised in their home village, but no father is recorded in the parish register.
Marriage between a widow and her deceased husband's brother was prohibited under ecclesiastical law, although until 1835 there was no civil ban, and such marriages were not void (although voidable). The 1835 Marriage Act however, hardened the law into an absolute prohibition (while, however, authorising any such marriages which had already taken place), so that such marriages could no longer take place in the UK.
Richard and Harriet were very probably discouraged from marrying because of ecclesiastical disapproval. But faced with a civil ban, they married before the Marriage Act came into force on 31 Aug 1835, marrying outside their own parish by licence. They continued to live in their own village, and everybody must have known the circumstances. Probably nobody cared except the vicar!
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One of my wife's ancestors married his deceased wife's sister in a register office ceremony in Liverpool in 1888, then (on the basis that the marriage was invalid under English law) they sailed to New York and married again in Brooklyn two weeks later. That was a Sunday, and the following Wednesday they returned to Liverpool.
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The 1835 Marriage Act however, hardened the law into an absolute prohibition (while, however, authorising any such marriages which had already taken place), so that such marriages could no longer take place in the UK.
Not strictly prohibited as such - what the Act actually said (s2) was ...
"That all marriages which shall hereafter be celebrated between persons within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity or affinity shall be absolutely null and void to all intents and purposes whatsoever"
So it made any such marriages automatically void - but that didn't prevent them from happening, and quite regularly. My 3x G Grandfather married his widows younger sister (in 1840). They went to a neighbouring parish for the ceremony, but family members were witnesses and I doubt there was much attempt at any secrecy about it.
Despite the 1835 Act It is a fairly common thing to find in families at that time, and no offence was committed by anyone doing it.
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I just found out my 3xgreat grandfather's half brother William Warden Walder (same father from his 2nd marriage) married in 1877 and his first wife died and he married his first wife's sister in 1887. She died in 1929 and he in 1933.
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Been enjoying this thread, and was surprised today when I found a relative who’s young wife died soon after they married which was in 1886, then married her sister in 1892. Small parish (Pett, Sussex) everyone in town would have known this. Found a short obit too, he was the best cricketer the town had ever produced!
Didn’t get too far on the next sibling, but looks like his sister married the brother of the two wives. They all lived down the road from his grandmother.
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Been enjoying this thread, Small parish (Pett, Sussex) everyone in town would have known this. Found a short obit too, he was the best cricketer the town had ever produced!
a) You're not supposed to enjoy threads about dead wives. :) b) I'm very sorry for this bit....As a youngster I loved Pett, still do. I played Stoolball for Pett village in the 1950's whilst on holiday ( a game like rounders but with a wicket on a post). ....From what I remember there were about fifteen houses plus a few farms. The Two Sawyers club is still a dream watering hole though with a lovely bluebell woods behind.
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Been enjoying this thread, Small parish (Pett, Sussex) everyone in town would have known this. Found a short obit too, he was the best cricketer the town had ever produced!
a) You're not supposed to enjoy threads about dead wives. :) b) I'm very sorry for this bit....As a youngster I loved Pett, still do. I played Stoolball for Pett village in the 1950's whilst on holiday ( a game like rounders but with a wicket on a post). ....From what I remember there were about fifteen houses plus a few farms. The Two Sawyers club is still a dream watering hole though with a lovely bluebell woods behind.
And all these years I’ve been enjoying learning about my dead ancestors😁!
Rounders? Remember, I’m Canadian…but I do think I played it when I visited England at the age of 11. No clue what I was doing…
I do have a wonderful photo of a group of stoolball playing women taken in Heathfield, Sussex pre WWI, includes my great grandmother, she must have been in in her forties then. They aren’t actually playing in the photo, just posing.
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Not strictly prohibited as such - what the Act actually said (s2) was ...
"That all marriages which shall hereafter be celebrated between persons within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity or affinity shall be absolutely null and void to all intents and purposes whatsoever"
So it made any such marriages automatically void - but that didn't prevent them from happening, and quite regularly. My 3x G Grandfather married his widows younger sister (in 1840). They went to a neighbouring parish for the ceremony, but family members were witnesses and I doubt there was much attempt at any secrecy about it.
Despite the 1835 Act It is a fairly common thing to find in families at that time, and no offence was committed by anyone doing it.
I've never understood the reasons for the 1835 Act. I understand the religious prohibition as it flows from the idea that marriage makes a husband and wife "one flesh" and therefore their respective relatives were regarded as blood relatives. It seems unnecessarily strict though. I imagine that many of these marriages were for sound practical reasons as widow(er)s were left with young children to support or care for.
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My Grandmother's cousin married, as her 3rd husband, their Aunt's widower
She therefore became step-mother to her two cousins
She had divorced her first husband for cruelty ( a rare thing in the early 1900's) -- he later went on to murder the supposed lover of his second wife and was sentenced to hang, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
She and my Grandmother were close, and my Grandmother inherited several pieces of her gold jewellery which I now have.
One of the pieces has initials on -- but I cannot find anyone with those initials in any of the families she was connected to, so where it has come from is a mystery!