It Ain't Necessarily So

[exiled brummie]

It is generally assumed that if a father's name is missing from a marriage certificate then one of the partners was illegitimate. As a result, my heart sank when my 3x great grandfather's name was missing on my 2x great grandmother's marriage certificate (1853).

The truth is that her father died when she was 3 at the very oldest, and she simply didn't know his name. She had a brother 7 years her senior and their father's name is on his marriage certificate.

So, absence of evidence of a legitimate father on a marriage certificate is not always evidence of absence of the same.

[Colin Rowledge]

Hello
I have several marriage cert.s with a 'father not being named'. Thank you for this tip as now I'll look for marriages of older siblings.

Colin

[Peter Goodey]

Barbara Dixon's web site reminds us that Liam Gallagher* refused to name his father on his marriage registration because they had not spoken for 20 years

*A singer in a popular music combo, m'lud.

[benny1982]

My ancestor left her fathers name blank when she wed in 1841. I later found her baptism and she was legitimate. Her father died in 1838. He was in fact Levi Hawkes, a carpenter. But she left that blank.

[Neil Wilson]

Legitimacy runs in my family. I have heard of vicars inserting the name of who they thought was the father after the baptism, but on the register's for my lot is just one word, begins with B and ends with D.

[benny1982]

Also many people in Victorian times and before said they were married when they were not.

[v.wells]

I have one marriage cert that doesn't name the father. It just says "foundling" across the page. This by itself doesn't mean the woman was illegitimate - the parents may have died and she was taken in by family friends or complete strangers. To make it more difficult on the census her place of birth varies until she married and then she said she was born in the place she grew up in.

[exiled brummie]

Also many people in Victorian times and before said they were married when they were not.

Yep Benny, I've one or two of those as well!!

[Jan65]

Also the person they were told was their father wasn't always their father! My 2xg grandmother gave her "father's" name on her marriage certificate, but further investigation revealed that he had died at least two years before she was born. I'm presuming she grew up believing him to have been her father, or else she was trying to hide her illegitimacy when she married.

[Nicolina]

I have a copy of a marriage certificate where the father's name is given BUT where first name is his actual father's and the surname is his step-father's. It was only when I viewed the actual Parish Register that I found out his real father's name.