wrong name?

[horseshoe]

Hello,

I have just received my great grandparents marriage certificate for December 1872, the brides father is named, but there is a different name for the groom's father.
I know the grooms fathers name, which is different to that on the cert. The groom's father was also still alive at the time and the groom was legitimate .

I can not understand how this is, my great grand father and all his siblings were legitimate.

Can anyone help with this?. Thanks.

[Megan Roberts]

Are you 100% sure that you have the right certificate? Some years ago I thought that I had identified the correct certificate, on the basis that it was the only possible one in the year with the right combination of names, but again the groom's father's name did not make sense. It was another family member who worked out that they actually married several years earlier, and only then did we find the right certificate.

There is another explanation and that is the registrar or priest simply wrote down the wrong name. Most people did not get copies of their certificates, because they had no need for them, and of course many were illiterate anyway - so how would they know if it were wrong.

Mistakes happen even today. I remember reading about a case in the last couple of years, where a lady has terrible problems, because the registrar incorrectly recorded her birth as a boy, and there is some rule which prevents them simply making a correction to the original entry. I think from memory that the only way it can be done is for her to certify a gender change!

[Pam Downes]

Does the groom's father's occupation 'match'? e.g, he's a shoemaker in the census, and a shoemaker on the certificate?
If so, it could be a simple case of the groom not actually knowing his father's name.

But, as Megan has already said, it could be that you have the wrong certificate. It's surprising how many times the same names marry. And even with a more unusual surname I remember having to search the GRO Index quarterly returns for the marriage of my 2x great grandparents (FreeBMD was in its infancy, nor was the 1871 census online to tell me they were married before then rather than after) and I had a heck of a job as I had to go back eleven years before the birth of their first (known) child.

Is the marriage in the area you would expect it to be, based on birth and then both pre-marriage and post-marriage census?

As always, if you'd like to give us some details we'll see what we can find.
(I presume that you are quite certain of the bride's surname because you've purchased the birth certificate of the child who is your grandfather/grandmother?)

Pam

[horseshoe]

Hello,

This is becoming a nightmare!.

My great grandfather, George Henderson was born in Wooler in Northumberland in October 1840, I have his birth certificate.
He was a furnace man in the Glaisdale area of Yorkshire in 1871 when he married a Sarah Smith in 1872, even the ages are wrong!!.
On all the census, George has put his age down as 4 years younger than he is!, yet he is my great grandfather.

Georges occupation matches with the census for the time and the area on the marriage certificate, it is just the name of his father does NOT. Dear oh Dear, what did our ancestors get up to??

any help much appreciated.

[horseshoe]

Further to the mess!!, George Henderson had been married before and was living in the Whitby area, the marriage certificate is in the Whitby district.

[arthurk]

As I understand it, you have (a) the censuses and 1872 marriage certificate agreeing on George's birth in about 1844, and (b) a birth certificate from 1840 where the father's name is different from the marriage certificate. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)

So far you've assumed that the 1840 birth certificate is correct and that his age is wrong on the censuses. Looking at it from the outside, is it possible that everything I've listed as (a) is correct, and that you have the wrong birth? Or to put it another way, if you'd obtained the 1872 marriage certificate and the census entries before looking for his birth, is there anything that would have made you prefer the 1840 birth above any other possibilities?

It would be helpful if you could track down details of his earlier marriage, as that certificate might give some valuable clues.

Arthur

[horseshoe]

George was born in October 1840, this is true, I have his birth cert, His father was called Alexander. The name of the father on the marriage cert I have just received is wrong, mind Alexander was 62 by the time his son George married in 1872 and I wonder if he even made it to the wedding? . I just wonder why George would not have put his father's name down?.
I never thought about obtaining his earlier marriage certificate.

[Lesley Robertson]

It's always easier to help when we have all the info that's needed! Are we talking of George, son of Alexander from Ford and Isabella from Doddington?
What was the name he gave on the marriage cert?
Is there a chance that Alex had 2 forenames, and George used the middle one?

My GUncle gave the wrong forename for his mother when he registered his father's death. I've always assumed that it was because he only knew her as "mother" and didn't want to admit that he didn't know her actual name.

Was your guy related to the George who married Dorothy? He can't be yours because he's still with Dorothy in the 1901, long after the marriage to Sarah. My main reason for mentioning him is the fact that he gave a different birth parish in each census, including Wooler in 1871! The census is only as reliable as the information-giver, and I've seen people's ages vary by +/- 5-6 years in the 10 years between censuses. What was the name of wife 1?

I can see only 1 couple George & Sarah Henderson in the census. In 1881 He said his b. was abt 1843 in Northumberland (shepherd). In 1891 it was 1844, Whitwood, Northumberland (farm lab), in 1901, it was 1841 in Nk (not known), Northumberland (ag lab). I think it's the same couple as Sarah's consistently from Yorkshire.

[thewideeyedowl]

Hi Horseshoe - really good to have you round the forums once more.

First, did George and/or Sarah sign their names on the 1872 certificate, or did one/both simply 'make their mark'? If in fact they 'made their mark', then they might not have had sufficient reading skills to check that the minister had entered the correct details; or perhaps the minister got flustered and wrote the name of a witness as the father. That was the scenario that caused me/the forum much heartache and hard work last year as I tried to discover the identity of the mother of Barnabas Downer: https://www.british-genealogy.com/thr...arnabas-Downer. It was only after I had got the marriage cert for his second nuptials that things became clear.

So I think you need to consider that perhaps a mistake was made on the marriage cert itself, and I also think you should get a copy of George's first marriage cert too. Any discrepancies should help to solve the problem.

In the meantime, I suggest you check out Family Search for all possible births/marriages for the George Henderson who was your great-grandfather, keeping an open mind about dates.

Hope you will be able to solve the riddle.

Keep us posted.

Owl

[horseshoe]

Hello Wideeyed, nice to speak again, I have been busy for some months hence the absence.

I think you might have a point here, Sarah did not sign the cert, there is only a cross and George, well, his signature looks a bit like the writing of the person who filled out the whole cert, the clerk in 1872!!.

Lesley, yes it is George, son of Alexander and Isabella, I never gave much thought to Alexander having a middle name .

Mind I will update you on one thing, do you remember " Peki" on the 1911 census that I found; well it turned out to be Peter, yes, Sarah's sister Ann married a Peter Butterfield, my grandfather was living with them in 1911, how about that, really , the trouble
names cause!!.

Now, as to this riddle, I have been online all day, the Genealogist site and I have come to the conclusion that piecing together the clues, mostly from Sarah's background plus a bit of local and social history-my new hobby, I reckon I have the right cert.
Oh, George's first wife; Margaret, nee King, died tragically of enteric fever, April 1871 in the Glaisdale District , Whitby.

one last thing, a new book " Liberty's Dawn" by Emma Griffin, this is about the working classes, their autobiographies, this will give valuable clues to help with research, it seems our ancestors lives were just as complicated as our own.

Thank you for your input, I am going to apply for Georges marriage cert from his first marriage.