It’s not uncommon to find a couple named on the birth certificate of a child but there appears to be no marriage certificate for the couple. If they are named on the birth certificate surely there must be a marriage for them? Let’s look at some of the reasons why marriages aren’t initially found and how to get round this. We’ll be focusing on marriages after 1837 in this post as that’s when civil registration began.
Different surname for the bride
The bride may have been married before but her previous married name didn’t appear on the birth certificate of her child. Normally it would give the mother’s details in the form Ann Pickersgill, formerly Baker (maiden name), previously Wilson (her previous married name). If this isn’t included on the certificate or if you’re just looking at the birth indexes then you’ll be looking for the wrong name for the bride. One way round this is to search for the name of the groom with just the first name of the bride or to order a birth certificate for one of their other children to see if more details are provided.
Wrong date
The parents could have been married over 20 years before if they married young and the birth certificate is for one of their younger children. So it’s worth expanding the search back in time especially if census records suggest it was one of their younger children. Conversely the parents may have married after the birth of the child even though the information they gave suggested they were already married. An example of this is Olivia Whittaker, daughter of William Whittaker born on 17 July 1858 in Leeds. Her mother was Ann Whittaker, formerly Dunne, previously Reynolds. However, they did not in fact marry until 26 December 1859 and registered Olivia as if they were already married.
Fictitious father on birth certificate
If the child and the mother are found on the census with no father, the father on the birth certificate may have been invented to save the mother registering an illegitimate child. A baptism, if it can be found might help with this if the baptism just gives the mother’s name. One example, where different information appeared on the birth certificate and the baptism is Julia Simpson Wainwright, known as Julia Simpson throughout her life. She was born on 15 December 1871 in Leeds, the daughter of Maria Wainwright with no father named but her baptism two weeks later at Mount St Mary’s in Leeds gave her father as John Simpson.
Sometimes the father’s first name on a marriage certificate may be wrong and this can happen if the father died while the child was young and they couldn’t remember his first name or if the person writing the certificate wrote the wrong name down.
Different place
They might have married somewhere unexpected. It was traditional to marry in the bride’s parish so if her birthplace can be identified from census records it may help find where the couple married. Sometimes a couple would marry in a large town if they were both working there and met there. If they had something to hide they may have eloped and could have married some distance away. It may be worth looking for a licence which couples would apply for if they wanted to marry with some privacy. Marriage licences granted by church authorities still survive and are usually held at record offices though many have been digitised or indexed on genealogy databases, for example, those for the Diocese of York are indexed on FindMyPast with the originals at the Borthwick Institute at the University of York.
Transcription errors
One of the most common reasons for not finding any record is that the names have been transcribed wrongly or have been spelled in an unexpected way so always look for variants. For example, my name has a large number of variants such as Melia, Malia, Maleah and even O’Melia and O’Mealey. It’s worth playing around with different combinations of the bride’s name and the groom’s name especially if one of them has a surname which is often spelled in a variety of different ways. In some cases parish registers are available online so these can be searched instead. If a couple married in an Anglican church the register entry will have exactly the same information as the marriage certificate issued by the General Register Office so if the parish records are available they are worth searching. For example, parish registers for West Yorkshire and Lancashire are available on Ancestry and those for North Yorkshire and York are on FindMyPast.
Late or no marriage
It may be the couple never married or married some considerable time after they got together. George Adkin and Mary Ann Connor were living together as if married on the 1871 census, with their first child born in 1864. When I looked for a marriage for them before their children were born I couldn’t find it. In fact they married in 1873, nine years after the birth of their first child. There was no obvious reason for not marrying sooner, neither appeared to have been married to someone else. Sometimes a marriage can be delayed if one of the partners has a spouse who is still alive but in this case it seems George and Mary Ann just didn’t get round to it!
Local indexes
Another alternative to the GRO marriage indexes are local indexes. Marriages were recorded locally and indexes sent to the Registrar General quarterly and those local indexes remain with the local registrars. Many counties have made these indexes available on the internet. Local indexes for Yorkshire and Lancashire are available and are worth looking at as an alternative as they may show the correct spelling of a name where it has been copied wrongly in the GRO indexes.
A common problem for more recent marriages is a trend towards marrying abroad. While it’s very enjoyable for the couple concerned to marry somewhere sunny, it does make it harder for future generations of genealogists!