**COMPLETED** Warning: VERY complicated, detective work!

[amypatricia1]

Hello,

This part of my family tree has been puzzling me for a long time. Now I have decided to get some outside opinions. I'm hoping there is someone out there patient enough to read all of this!!  What I've written here may go over a lot of heads - But I need to tell someone, and where better to post than Rootschat? Here goes...



My grandmother hated her parents. Her brothers and sister also hated said parents. My grandmother has Alzheimer's so I cannot discuss this with her, and my great uncles and aunt live overseas, and they don't know much about their family or even their parents because none of them were very close or ever cared to know.

The aforementioned parents' names are:
Bernard Alfred Sullivan (born Rosenberg), and
Harriet Caroline O'Brien.

DISCREPANCIES:
BERNARD:
(On his birth certificate)
Name: Bernard Alfred
Father: Richard Thomas Rosenberg
Mother: Annie Blanche Miles

(On his daughter's birth certificate)
Child's name: Patricia Ann Sullivan
Father: Bernard Alfred Sullivan
Mother: Harriet Caroline O'Brien

(On his marriage certificate)
(Of which there are two, for some reason, everything the same except the witnesses names)
Groom's name: Bernard Arthur Sullivan otherwise Rosenberg (His mother re-married William Sullivan when he was 7, which explains the name change).
Bride's name: Caroline Harriet O'Brien (But then where it says "This marriage was solemnised between us" at the bottom, her name is switched around, to Harriet Caroline O'Brien)
Groom's father: William Rosenberg
Witnesses (on cert #1): C. O'Brien, George O'Brien, William O'Brien
Witnesses (on cert #2): C. O'Brien, George O'Brien, Nellie O'Brien.

Certificate two is in completely different handwriting, with a handwritten date "6.1.1992" down the bottom, so I'm assuming it was hand written in 1992. My grandmother had this certificate in her collection and I've no idea where she would have gotten it. Also on the 2nd marriage certificate, it says at the top "CERTIFIED COPY OF AN ENTRY OF MARRIAGE, PURSUANT TO THE MARRIAGE ACT OF 1949" but the marriage took place in 1931. I don't understand?

P.S. Where the father's name has changed from "Richard Thomas Rosenberg" to "William Rosenberg" is it possible Bernard tried to explain that his biological father was Richard Thomas Rosenberg but his step-father was William Sullivan, and the person writing just transcribed it incorrectly? Where he is Richard Thomas on his son's birth certificate his occupation is Motor Car Driver, and where he is William Rosenberg on his son's marriage certificate, his occupation is Chauffeur - which fit.


HARRIET CAROLINE:
(Birth certificate)
Child's name: Harriet Caroline
Father: Cornelius Bryant
(On this certificate, under "Sex" they have written 'Boy' and crossed it out to write 'Girl'. And they've also written 'Brian' and crossed it out, wherever it said Bryant. Why would she have been born Bryant and gone on to use the name O'Brien?)


This is all making me have a sneaking suspicion that the information I have been provided by my grandmother (before she got Alzheimer's) and my great uncle, has been inaccurate and people aren't really who we think they are. I will probably have to start back at square one!

Or could it be that this side of my family just had a lot of bad luck when it came to people transcribing things? I have been told they were illiterate - Maybe they forgot their parents names, or their own? (Bernard Alfred became Bernard Arthur, Harriet Caroline Bryant became Caroline Harriet O'Brien, etc).

I have attached an image. Why would the marriage be entered twice? I have two certificates, and two results on ancestry.com. Does that make sense to anyone?

Thank you in advance, whoever replies, I LOVE YOU!! 

Amy.

[Romilly]

HARRIET CAROLINE:
(Birth certificate)[/b]
Child's name: Harriet Caroline
Father: Cornelius Bryant
(On this certificate, under "Sex" they have written 'Boy' and crossed it out to write 'Girl'. And they've also written 'Brian' and crossed it out, wherever it said Bryant. Why would she have been born Bryant and gone on to use the name O'Brien?)

Hi Amy,

Just a thought...

I too have a Birth Cert for a family member where the gender was altered, - 'Boy' crossed out and ammended to 'Girl' and name changed accordingly. It was changed by the Registrar as a 'Clerical Error'. My understanding is that sometimes mistakes are genuinely made at the time of birth...and corrected later!

Your family's records do look a little confusing...hopefully someone on here will be able to help you untangle it a little.

Best Wishes, Romilly.

[amypatricia1]

Thanks for taking the time to reply Romilly.

I'm leaning towards my family just having a lot of bad luck with clerical errors combined with the fact they were illiterate. Because the occupations all match up. So I guess my main question is why is the marriage listed twice? Is that unusual?

And also, any information about the mysterious 2nd marriage certificate with the new witness.

Basically just interested to get ideas and opinions and if these sort of doubling up of results has happened to anyone else.

[alpinecottage]

The marriage is only indexed twice (or more likely four times) because of the Caroline Harriet/ Harriet Caroline issue.  There will only be one certificate.  There will probably be two more listings for Rosenberg/Sullivan, though I haven't checked - still only one cert though.

The witness change (William to Nellie) will be a clerical error probably because at some stage a clerk couldn't read what was written.  You would need to look at an original parish record or ask the local register office (Stepney, I imagine) to check for you.

For some reason your gran got or was given a modern copy of the marriage cert perhaps for pension purposes or out of curiosity or because someone else was doing the family history.  The copy was made under the 1949 act, and the date has no bearing on the 1931 marriage.

As regards the Bryant/Brian/O'Brien issue - they all refer to the same name but some people dropped the O' or Mc bits of Irish names because they sounded "too Irish" and if they were illiterate, it's not surprising there was some confusion.

[danuslave]

(On his marriage certificate)
(Of which there are two, for some reason, everything the same except the witnesses names)
Groom's name: Bernard Arthur Sullivan otherwise Rosenberg (His mother re-married William Sullivan when he was 7, which explains the name change).
Bride's name: Caroline Harriet O'Brien (But then where it says "This marriage was solemnised between us" at the bottom, her name is switched around, to Harriet Caroline O'Brien)
Groom's father: William Rosenberg
Witnesses (on cert #1): C. O'Brien, George O'Brien, William O'Brien
Witnesses (on cert #2): C. O'Brien, George O'Brien, Nellie O'Brien.

Certificate two is in completely different handwriting, with a handwritten date "6.1.1992" down the bottom, so I'm assuming it was hand written in 1992. My grandmother had this certificate in her collection and I've no idea where she would have gotten it. Also on the 2nd marriage certificate, it says at the top "CERTIFIED COPY OF AN ENTRY OF MARRIAGE, PURSUANT TO THE MARRIAGE ACT OF 1949" but the marriage took place in 1931. I don't understand?

Don't make life any more complicated than it already is  

People (especially Family Historians) get copies of certificates for all sorts of reasons! These will show the date when they were issued.

The second copy dated 1992, is exactly what it says

a CERTIFIED COPY OF AN ENTRY OF MARRIAGE

So an official in a Register office has made an official (certified) handwritten copy of an entry in the register.  I suspect that this person misread William as Nellie.

Bride's name: Caroline Harriet O'Brien
this is the name she was registered with at birth

Harriet Caroline O'Brien
this will have been her normal signature in the register when she got married.  Presumably she was known as Harriet rather than Caroline  

Linda

Ooops - sorry alpinecottage.  But at least we agree 

[sandiep]

if you check the ref on the 2 certificates you will find they are both the same
\stepney \london  Oct qtr vol 1c  page 392 so whichever one you sent for it would be same.
as for name changes I would need a doublesided page to go into all differences I have found while researching mine and others families.
sandie

[LizzieW]

My husband's grandfather was always known as Arthur Edmund, but when the family came to register his death and had to produce a birth certificate to prove his age, they found his name was Edmund Arthur.  They then had to produce other documents, utility bills etc. to prove that it was the same person. 

He was born in 1875, but he knew his name.  He was always Edmund A on census, until he got married when he changed it to Arthur E.  On the 1901 census he is Arthur E, on the 1911 census Edmund A, and some time later until his death was known as Arthur E.

This is just an example to show that just because you find someone with the correct names in different order, it doesn't mean it's not the same person.

Lizzie

[louisa maud]

My how strange that one family have what seems to be so many errors

Bernard is documented as being born 31/07/1910 and died 1998 at Southend, possible birth took place in Alton Hampshire ref 2c 171 1910 Dec qtr you can possibly find him on 1911 census with his parents

Louisa Maud

[amypatricia1]

That's what I thought Louisa Maud. Incredible that out of all the families I'm researching, THIS one has so many clerical errors and name changes. But I know they're the same people due to the occupations matching up. Thanks for all your stories, it does make me feel better that people can empathise