How do I know for sure if somebody was married?

[ShowOfHands]

This may get confusing!

I have a lot of oral history from my Grandma so know an awful lot outside of the official records for my family but no idea if my Grandma's Granny Amy married the love of her life.

Amy had a baby aged 16 when unmarried and in the workhouse. The baby was taken away and raised by a relative. She then married a man called George and took his surname.
Amy and George had a lot of dc together, sometimes records show she is in the workhouse and he's off living with an unmarried woman. Fits my Grandma's stories. George was an abusive prick and cheated several times, leaving Amy in a total pickle time and again.

George left Amy. Family legend says that Amy danced on the table with relief.

Amy is then listed (1911) as living as a housekeeper with an unmarried man and two of the children from her marriage to George. Unmarried man is Alfred. They were actually a couple then and for the rest of their lives.

Before this entry and after George had sodded off for good, Amy had two children (died whilst v small) listed as "FirstName AlfredsSurname GeorgesSurname", one has George listed as the father, one has Alfred GeorgesSurname listed as the father. I simply assumed that the two children were born out of wedlock and the official records are a bit of a fudge.

Amy is then listed as Amy AlfredsSurname in all future records but George is still alive for most of those years and there are no marriage records for Amy and Alfred. They have another baby together and are listed as the parents though the baby is given George's surname. Then in 1939, the records are a bit odd. Amy and Alfred are listed as husband and wife and their child is listed as living with them and both as having a deceased father and being the daughter of the head of the house. George died in 1938 so he is dead but I'm pretty sure she is Alfred's child. Again, maybe a bit of a fudge due to Amy and Alfred not being married.

Anyway, Amy and Alfred both died in 1944, are buried together but on the death register Amy is listed as "Amy AlfredsSurname otherwise GeorgesSurname". I can find no record of Amy and Alfred marrying at all. Does her death record suggest she only used his name and they definitely didn't marry? I'm not sure divorce was even possible but even if not, they had 6yrs together where Amy's first DH George was dead so could have married then. Except there was a war on and so maybe they were old and simply didn't bother.

My Grandma adored Alfred and in her eyes, he was her Grandad but there was no secret of the fact that he wasn't her real grandad.

Amy and Alfred were together 40yrs and I do wonder if they ever managed to marry. I know it doesn't matter really but they describe themselves as husband and wife in a couple of official records (1921 census and 1939 register). Could they have done this without being actually married?

I can give surnames, places and dates if anybody has any idea of where else I could search or if anybody could search for me? I use Ancestry mostly and another BMD site with excellent records.

I would say that no, they probably didn't marry, due to having used both surnames at her death. Did she die first? Do you have her actual death certificate, or have you only seen the burial register?

It would be perfectly possible to put any information you like on the census. Nobody would ask for proof.

Forgot to mention - have you searched for a will for any of the three of them?

Alfred died in June 1944 and Amy died in October 1944 so he died first. George, as I said in my op, died in 1938 so they theoretically could have married even if she never divorced George. I don't have their death certificates though am considering ordering them. I just have the entries in the register and the burial records.

I will check probate records now.

As suspected, nothing on wills and probate. I've probably gone as far as I can on Ancestry tbh. They were also really poor and had nothing to leave so don't expect there'd be anything to find iyswim.

I do wonder why they gave their children together her first husband's name. If they were living together and open about it. Maybe propriety. They were quite strict Methodists. I can't even imagine it. 12 children, first at 16 in a workhouse (no idea whose baby it was), 4 babies died, awful husband who kept shacking up with other women and reportedly beat Amy regularly and eventually abandoned by her first husband. At least she then had what I was told was a lovely relationship with a kind man. I have photos of her but not of Alfred and I wish I could see his face. My Grandma said he was extraordinarily kind and took on all of the children without question.

I'd order all three certificates, and do it through the GRO site - some other sites offer it, but cost far more.

What could be interesting for you is the informant who went to register the death, particularly for Amy, because it would have been the information they gave to the registrar regarding the two surnames. So whoever they were, presumably they must have known the true picture.

I've pieced together a few bits of info on relatives finding snippets in newspapers on Find my Past, may be worth a search? Or British Newspaper Archive.

I've searched the British Newspaper Archive and Find My Past. Nothing of note. Well for them anyway. I found all sorts about other people, including exactly what happened to my Granny's nephew who died from TB ostensibly but it turns out he was knocked down by the Royal Mail in 1917 and admitted to hospital, dying a month later and the hospital suggested the trauma of the injuries and the exposure to illness in hospital may have been a lethal combination. I had no idea.

I'll look into the GRO. I've always put off ordering certificates as I have so many I'd like and I do need to feed the children.

I can't find a single record for her death certificate on the GRO. Just says no matches found

If they ever married the record should be held here

www.gov.uk/order-copy-birth-death-marriage-certificate

However they probably never did get married. If she was abandoned by her first husband she may not have been able to afford to divorce him or simply not been able to find him to divorce him at that time. It was a lot more contentious to get divorced back then as there had to be blame apportioned and proof of infidelity. Also, by the time her first husband died, if she even knew he was dead they may just have been living as man and wife for so long they might have thought it would just draw attention to their unmarried state particularly if they were strict Methodist as they would have her to have banns called in their church to marry.

I'm just glad Amy was happy with Alfred after her first husband being a nightmare.

Agree with everyone else they probably never married. By the time George had died they were presumably fairly elderly and living as man and wife for 40 years, marrying at that point would have just flagged to everyone that they weren't married before.

As George's widow, would she have been eligible for a pension? Not suggesting that was their sole motivation for not marrying- I think the keeping up the pretence that they were already married was more important- but that might have been a factor.

She knew exactly where George was. He lived less than a mile away for the rest of his life and there is no way on God's green earth that she would have accepted his pension. I have a lot of the family's correspondence and my Grandma (died 2yrs ago) was close to Amy. She accepted nothing from him from the day he left, even when their children died and needed a funeral. Amy did everything herself as a point of pride. The whole family rejected him.

Searching for a marriage record requires me to submit a year so I might spend some time later trying to cover the 40yrs and see what comes up.

I've found a death certificate for Amy and ordered it so that might answer some questions.

Illegitimacy is a minefield. Researching my family tree, I also found out that on the other side of my family, my Grandad who was completely against sex outside of marriage and living in sin as he called it - to the point he temporarily rejected his pregnant unmarried DD and was very rude to my live in boyfriend - was actually born out of wedlock. His Mum was married to and already had DC with somebody else and couldn't marry my Grandad's Dad until TWENTY years after they got together. I don't know if I feel more or less cross about my Grandad's attitude now. Being kind, I wonder if he suffered because of it and that's why he was so vocal but I wish he'd been a bit more compassionate.

Fair enough SOH. It could have gone either way, refusing to take anything to do with him or feeling like it was some compensation for his awful treatment.
My Grandad was always ashamed his parents married whist his mum was pregnant which is really sad. Like you though we have all sorts of reactions to illegitimacy scattered across the tree. Banishment and quick weddings to total acceptance.

FIL is the same. Very judgy about people having babies before they are married. His parents weren't married when his older sister was born, and his mum was 6 months pregnant with him when they finally got hitched.

DH recently had his DNA done. We've decided not to tell FIL that the test indicates that FIL's dad (so DH;'s grandad) did not have the father he thought he did.

I've always idly wondered about doing Ancestry DNA but a couple of years ago, a relative was contacted by somebody who'd done it and it indicated that he had half siblings he didn't know about. He did a v small amount of digging and uncovered infidelity. It was a flipping awful time for him and I lost all interest in DNA profiling at that point!

@ShowOfHands
You finding out about your grandad's illegitimacy reminds me of a sad story about my cousin, who researched her mum and dad's family history as a Ruby Wedfing anniversary gift.

As a spin-off, she made a family tree chart with photos and key dates for her great uncle's 80th birthday. He was at first delighted, then pointed out a mistake in the wedding date of his parents. My cousin got out the marriage certificate to prove she was correct and only then realised that the marriage came a month after the great-uncle's birth.

He had had one great love in his life, a woman who had a posthumous child by her fiance who was killed before they could marry. His parents made him give her up as she had been so immoral as to have sex before marriage and was therefore not good enough for an upright, godfearing man like him.

He never married, and at the age of 80 discovered how hypocritical and deceitful his parents had been to him. Devastating.

Oh gosh. That is so so sad.

My granny was born in the 1880s and used to say that actually, if you checked the records, many babies were conceived before marriage in the 19th century and that it wasn't as frowned upon then as engagement was deadly serious and pretty much binding. She said she'd seen a lot of pregnant brides in her time. You just didn't comment. She did acknowledge that things had changed though and that in the 20th century, engagement became a lot less serious and suddenly parents and grandparents who'd had sex before marriage themselves and maybe married whilst pregnant, suddenly became very sniffy about it.

Death certificate came today. Amy is listed as "Amy AlfredsSurname otherwise GeorgesSurname" and her husband is listed as George which answers my question. Informant was my Grandma's Mum who was Amy's daughter in law which is no surprise as she was nursed/cared for my my Grandma and her Mum in those last months.

Cause of death was:

(a) carcinoma of the tongue
(b) exhaustion

In DH's father he has a female ancestor about the same time who was married. (He is actually descended from her subsequent later partner)

But her husband ran off with another woman about 5 years after they married. The husband went on to have 6 children with his new woman. As far as their family was concerned they were married - she took his name.

However the truth was different and one of his descendant is on genealogy websites saying that a horrible older relative told her that her grandparents weren't actually married and she wanted to disprove her.

Anyway, it transpired that the husband had a will in which he leaves his estate to his mistress (to avoid the legal issue of it going to his wife) and it names her name - her maiden name and her also known as name. And when she died her probate also records her under her assumed name but also states her other name too.

Thus demonstrating that they never married.

This woman looking into her family history eventually did find this out before I got in touch with her (Thankfully - I'm guessing she wasn't too pleased when she discovered the truth). Her mother and one of her uncles never knew the truth and she admitted they would have been horrified to have know. I shared what I'd found out about DH's side of the family and what I'd found out about her side.

It was dead interesting to hear the different family legends and stories that had been passed down and what the records actually proved.

My point being that, yes it is possible.

I've done a bit of research into situations of abandonment and bigamy as there's a few cases in DHs family.

It turns out that cohabiting was frowned upon, but if you had a 'legitimate' reason to start a new relationship (abandonment being the key one), that living as if you were a married couple was largely accepted as long as you didn't draw attention to it. So people would risk prosecution for bigamy or go out of their way to actively pretend to be married instead. So taking a partners name despite being unmarried (or married to someone else) was done quietly. This was one of the reasons that prosecutions for bigamy were rarely done because there wasn't support for it and as a rule people turned a blind eye. What they didn't like were people who made of show of being unmarried...

From the records in both my family and DH's family, being pregnant at the time of marriage seems to be incredibly common. Theres a really high percentage of it, particularly before the 20th Century and in less middle class families.

I also was surprised to find out that Victorians married much later than their descendants a hundred years later (during the 50s, 60s and 70s) ever did.

Our ideas about marriage and what we think our ancestors did, are surprisingly different from what they actually did!