married or not?

[em26]

Hi,

Can anyone recommend how i would go about finding out if someone married or not?
I have the person’s birth cert and a few bits of information but nothing that indicates she was married. If she did get married it would have been from 1951 onwards.
It is vital that i find out if she did marry in order to continue my research.
Thank you
 

[stanmapstone]

I would think that the only way would be to laboriously go through the GRO Marriage Indexes quarter by quarter, unless the place where she is likely to have been married has on-line indexes.

Stan

[avm228]

If you think they might have placed an engagement notice and/or marriage announcement in The Times, then I recommend a search of the Times Digital Archive which goes up to 1985.  I have traced several of my "cousin" lines through the 20th century in this way.

Anna

[em26]

HI Anna & Stan,

Thank you both for your help.
I will try your suggestions and see what i come up with
Emily

[avm228]

Another idea: if you know the full given names and precise date of birth then (if the person died or is likely to have died in Eng/Wales between 1984 and 2005) you can search the England and Wales Death Index by given name and birthdate alone; any perfect match may give you a clue to a possible marriage which could be researched further using the surname at death.

Obviously this works best if the given names were unusual - if she was a Mary Ann it probably isn't worth bothering with

Anna

[em26]

Thanks again Anna, Unfortunatley her first name is Ann but her surname is Doherty so i am hoping that might might a difference, a least it is not smith!!

[mshrmh]

em26 - there's a number of local BMD sites that have some data beyond 1950 that are free to access. If you go to
http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/
and try the "select a county" dropdown on the left you can go through these. Several use the same software (from CheshireBMD) and these can be searched together via
http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/index.php?form_action=local
using the "Multi region search"

[em26]

Thank you very much for the info!