Marriage cannot be found, common law?

[jjmb]

Hi,

Pulled off back burner once again. Looking for marriage of John Jackson to Ann(e) or Anna Cowsill. Starting with my grandmother and working backwards through certificates and census, I hit a dead end.

Great grandmother, Alice Jackson, has her parents as John & Ann (formerly Cowsill) on birth reg. Census entries (1861 to 1881) find them in Salford, John is a grocer. Both John & Ann are born in Lymm in 1824 and I have corresponding baptismals records for them. 1891 census find them back in Lymm, retired and with my great grandmother and her children staying with them.

I cannot find a marriage anywhere for them. Ancestry, FreeBMD, Cheshire and Lancashire BMD. I have been through all the indexes at the LDS.

So who were Ann's parents? If the baptismal record is correct, parents were John & Bridge (Dale) Cowsill of Lymm. Cannot find her with her parents in 1841. There is an Ann Cowsill, servant, in Birkenhead. 1851 there is an Ann Cowsill, servant, in Hulme.

There is an Dec. 1/4, 1853 marriage of an Ann Cowsill to Thomas Farrer. Did not last long as Thomas is found living with his mother in 1861, and no Ann Cowsill or Farrer can be found.

John & Ann's first child was born 24 Jan 1855. Assume the marriage (if it occurred) was in 1854.

I also found a William Cowsill, grandson, age 2, living with John & Bridget in Lymm, 1851. Appears William was born to Ann Cowsill and baptized 21 Apr 1849. No father is listed and UK pointed out to me in another post that this would indicate illegitimate.

Would this be a reason that no marriage can be found? Is there any other way, other than a marriage reg. to trace this Ann Cowsill back to John & Bridget in Lymm. Everything I have is circumstantial.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Judy

[Barbara Wilkinson]

No help for this one - but ...!
Someone I know spent years (literally!) looking for the marriage of his grandparents; he had started this after they had died. He had the birth certificate of his father and the names of his parents; the wording clearly suggested that they were married - mother blank blank, formerly blank - but nothing. Their names were not particularly common ones, and he searched for about 10 years either side of the date of birth, even though his grandfather was very strict, and he did not really believe there was a chance that they had "lived in sin"! He died a few years ago, and I have taken over some of the research. Whilst looking for another marriage for the same family, I have found the marriage entry - and got the certificate - there is no doubt at all that this is the correct couple. They were married 21 years after the birth of their son!! The question now is why? Why did they suddenly decide to get married, and we will probably never know the answer to that. The moral is - extend your search far beyond what you think is feasible; you never know, you might find it years later than you think!!

[Geoffers]

See Barbara's message above (marriages can be much later/earlier than thought), and also:

1. Did John JACKSON join the army at any time and get married during his service? There are separate (Army) Chaplains' returns of marriage 1796-1880. Unfortunately the Regimental Registers of marriage 1761-1924 have not been indexed and a search will only be undertaken if you know the regiment.

2. Try variant spellings of names - COWSILL, COWSIL, COWSALE, etc, etc

At the end of the day they may not have married.

[jjmb]

Thank you,

As I mentioned this marriage question keeps being filed away and then pulled out again.

Thank you for the suggestion for widening my search parameters. I have looked through at a 10 year span on both sides of 1854 and come up empty. Will have to keep looking, although as you say "at the end of the day they may not have married".

My current knowledge regarding John Jackson shows no indication of any military service.

Thanks again for responding.

Judy