Ancestors who never actually married.

[coombs]

I am sure we will have come across instances of direct ancestors, their siblings and cousins etc who appear to never have married. I guess it is easier to find this out if they were supposed to have married after civil reg began. I have a couple (ancestors brother married ancestor's sister) who claimed to have married in about 1902 according to the 1911 census, but no marriage has been found, and the groom had a rare forename. All variants and the like have been checked.

Of course this will apply to couples who seemed to have married before civil registration, however I doubt all the 1754-1837 marriages that took place in the UK are all indexed and put online now or indexed by FH societies etc, so this could explain an absence of a marriage. Also there will be a few 1754-1837 marriage registers that have not survived.

I guess some were reluctant to get married for religious reasons or other reasons. I have a few instances of a banns being read but no known marriage yet the couple stayed together according to later documents and the woman took the man's surname.

[Blue70]

I would imagine there were some cases where a child was due and rather than marry due to there being pressures on the couple they chose to just move away and start their family as though they were already married. My great, great grandparents left Ireland without marrying and they never ever married.


Blue 

[coombs]

I would imagine there were some cases where a child was due and rather than marry due to there being pressures on the couple they chose to just move away and start their family as though they were already married. My great, great grandparents left Ireland without marrying and they never ever married.


Blue

That as well. I have a couple who were in London by 1812 when their first child was born, and the husband was from South West England, and his wife may have been. So far I cannot find a likely marriage but never say never. I have spent 20 years on their marriage. If they did marry I doubt it was in London.

[DianaCanada]

My great-great grandmother had my great-grandfather in 1862 in Sussex, a second illegitimate child a couple of years later and next turns up in Lambeth with a partner with whom she had seven children.  My great grandfather remained in Sussex with her mother. 
I have no idea why she didn’t marry Thomas Jeff, who was widowed as a young man.  Her name, Mary Message Oliver (Message is a surname in her family but she was legitimate) was unusual enough and in records she often included Message.
They stayed together until Thomas died and then she went to Wales to live with a daughter.  Almost gave up finding her back in the day before the BMDs went online, she lived into her 90’s and I had no idea she went to Wales!
Just to add, the children went by the surname Jeff and were registered that way.

[coombs]

The groom of the couple who I mentioned in my first post who "married" circa 1802 was Sylvanus. So a rare forename so should have made it easier but it looks like they never walked down the aisle but remained a couple.

I guess if for example a couple from rural Suffolk moved to London to start a new life, or they had a baby on the way just claimed to be wed once they left their family parish and no one would be any the wiser.

[PrawnCocktail]

There is always the obvious reason - that one of them was married before   

Surprising how many were, and divorce was expensive. What surprises me was that their old spouse may even be resident in the same town!

And then there's the one's who wanted to marry their brother / sister-in-law after their spouses death. That was illegal until after WW1.

I saw one who did this - he was a local solicitor. They must have gone away for a while, and he put a notice in the paper,
"Saturday 01 July 1843
At Southampton, in November last, and subsequently in Scotland, Mr J H Sheppard of Towcester to Miss Sarah Gee"
No such marriage has been found!

The other people who may not have bothered were Romanies. Mostly they did, but not always!

The second marriages sometimes did take place - somewhere they weren't known. Or took place years later. One man I found was living under an assumed name, with his new "wife", whom he had married - until he wanted to claim his Old Age Pension, which he had to do under his real name. The authorities promptly took him to court for bigamy, but the judge let him off with just the two days he'd already served on remand.

[coombs]

There is always the obvious reason - that one of them was married before   

They may have wed under the wife's previously married name.

But if one was married before and widowed, I don't see how that would impede a subsequent marriage.

[DianaCanada]

There is always the obvious reason - that one of them was married before   

They may have wed under the wife's previously married name.

But if one was married before and widowed, I don't see how that would impede a subsequent marriage.

This is why I don't understand why Thomas Jeff and Mary Message Oliver did not marry as his first wife had died before they likely even met.
On the 1921 census Mary has recorded they were married 46 years and had had 8 children.  This is incorrect, so likely they had just told people they were married and they never got around to it.  They had seven children together, but her second illegitimate child, according to a descendant of hers, was brought up by Thomas and he was a very good father to her, but she was not his child. My great-grandfather William was not included in the list of 8 children - he was Mary's first and by DNA, not connected to the Jeff side.

[andrewalston]

I have a couple of chaps who married the dead wife's sister. However they did not marry close to home, but wandered 20+ miles to Liverpool, then returned.

In another case, the only clue that it was the dead wife's sister came from the brides' father's name and occupation. All had been married before - this was to be the third spouse for both parties, though she forgot to mention husband number two completely!