Any social historians around? Re marriage

[SingaporeSlinky]

I’ve traced some ancestors back to a marriage in 1821, in Derbyshire. Their ages aren’t listed at the time, but in the census of 1841 I’ve found them with the same names, husband is now 35 and wife is 40, so about 15/16 and 20/21 at the time of marriage, which seems unusual. The children, all born after they married, all have the mother’s maiden name.

Can anyone think why this might be?

I wondered if something to do with illegitimacy when I found their daughter’s marriage certificate, but they definitely married before the children came along, and clearly the wife didn’t change her name. On their daughter’s marriage cert, he is also listed as the father.

Any thoughts?

Ok I have spent a while on this and other trees came in very useful for once!

So Henry Goodwin snr is father to Anne Goodwin and Henry Goodwin jnr.

Anne marries James Grainger.
Henry jnr has 3 marriages, to Ann Smith, Jane Pomfry and Susan.

In the 1851 census, Henry snr and Henry jnr are living together aged 82 and 55, with the grandson Luke now living down the street with his new wife.
Henry snr dies not long after the census, aged 82. Henry jnr can be found a decade later aged 66, living with 73 year old Susan, and dies in 1862

This explains all the names!

It still doesn’t explain why Anne Goodwin’s children seem to have her maiden name, but I’ve managed to add her parents and one set of grandparents, so that’s my 7x great-grandparents.

Thanks for the help, I really appreciate it.

That's why I think Ann Smith and James Granger are the couple on the 1841 she isn't married to him so is using her married name of Goodwin. This also explains the 1851 marriage, why would they marry again if they were already married?
Sorry to keep going on but it all make sense and i don't like to see someone going down the wrong line.

I’m going to have to draw it out as I can’t get my head around it.

It's entirely plausible that it's that interesting. I got very confused over my family tree a while back until I realised that my 4x great uncle had knocked up his brother's wife while his own wife was around 5 months pregnant. His wife's child died about a month before his SILs baby was born & by that point he was living with the SIL, his brother having divorced her. His first wife died the following year leaving him free to marry the SIL a month later. His brother later remarried & there must have been some amount of co-parenting going on because the SIL/new wife's children popped up in both brothers' households at various times. Families can be messy!

Wow that’s complicated! I don’t know where to begin trying to untangle something like that. Problem is, the further back you go, the less information is on the marriage certificates, so how do we know anyone with the same name isn’t a sibling or cousin etc?
I’ve written down the info Elefant1 gave me yesterday but need to get my head into it at some point.

When it comes to being illiterate and people making their mark on documents, I read somewhere that they often only signed like that because the celebrant filling in the form assumed illiteracy and asked them to make their mark rather than a signature in order to avoid possible embarassment, just in case.

Yes I think that happened but there are differences over time and between different classes. In general the further back, the less likely the marker could read and write. I know that some people have found ancestors who marked at one stage and wrote at another and (other things being equal) it less likely that an adult learned to read and write late in life for their will rather than they put a mark as a younger adult for one of a range of reasons.

Example of discussion on this:

If a marriage register is signed with an "X" rather than a signature... (rootschat.com)

How did you become a reader and a writer, if from a non-elite background in England, if your parents were illiterate. We have to go down the Robert Raikes and Sunday Schools rabbit holes and a number of others to ponder that.

I have found examples where a bride marked with an x on the parish register, and so did her husband. Then after he died, for her second wedding, she wrote her name. So did she learn to write between the two weddings? Or more likely, from what I’ve read, it was either assumed she couldn’t write because her groom couldn’t, or to save her groom’s embarrassment, she put her mark rather than write.

The really significant thing about the consent of parents, though, is that it confirms they were both under 21 at the time of the marriage.