Difficult to find death certificate

[Redbone]

My mother was my father’s second wife. ( I only found this out by mistake when I was 18 and it was never talked about.) My father’s first wife had the same surname as him before marriage and he is listed on his marriage certificate to my mother as being a widower. Despite several friends researching on Ancestry nobody can find any death certificate for her. Sadly I no longer have any living relatives who could help me in my search. Any advice please?

Do you have a marriage record for them?

When was his first marriage? Did your father and his first wife appear on a census or the 1939 Register which will give more info, e.g. where they lived/dates of birth which might tie in with her death record if you have several women of the same name.
Have you considered her name might have been misspelled or wrongly transcribed?

As others have said, details of the original marriage would be a starting point to helping.

Without meaning to sound rude in any way, you must remember that people don't always tell the truth on official forms.

For example, other possibilities include your father may have been divorced or simply split up with his first wife rather than actually being a widower.

In which case the first wife may have gone on to remarry and her death would have been recorded as a different surname.

To give a specific example of people not telling the truth, I have a female relative who gave birth to two daughters and on their birth certificates gave the name of their father as her deceased husband who had died several years before they were born.

Or another relative who, on one census, described herself as a widow but in reality she had separated from her husband at the time and they later got back together and had more children together.

Or another relative, one of my mum's aunts. She married a guy and they had one daughter together. She then left him and had two children with some other unknown guy or guys. Then she later shacked up with another guy and took his last name and claimed to be married even though they never did marry.

There was no record of a divorce and her original husband later remarried 33 years after my mum's aunt left him. He also described himself as a widower.

As you can't find a death certificate it would be worth looking to see if you can find if his first wife was or even is actually still alive - e.g. did she remarry, can you find a later death certificate, electoral rolls. Also look for the death certificate with any possible misspellings of the name, e.g. Johnston could be registered as Johnstone or Johnson, she could have been known by her middle name or a nickname. Sometimes the person registering a death doesn't know the person that well and may not know their proper full name or correct age. I'm happy to look for you if you want to PM me.

i have found with ancestry... sometimes you need to be a bit sneaky. if you have found her, as in birth cert, marriage cert.. sometimes have a good poke about in other family trees will give you what you are looking for.

i have a similar issue with my uncles 2nd wife.. shes a mystery.. and also appears to have had the same surname to him prior to marriage.

Have you tried freebmd.org.uk? I prefer this for older records. I think it goes to about 1980s. If you dont know her name, you can search for the marriage with your dad's details and this should bring up a possible maiden name. Reverse the search and it'll give you her first name.

Another possible thing to try would be if you know her name, you could search newspapers.com to see if you can find an obituary notice. This might also bring up your dad's name too as it might say surname, first name, wife of [dad].

I've been using these sites a lot just lately trying to trace some ancestry and I've found them very easy to use, though there's a few rare surnames in my tree so they're easily found.