Genealogy Chat

Witnesses are also a clue when the father's name has been wrongly given on the marriage certificate. Several times the name of my 2x gt grandfather had been wrongly entered as William James instead of James William on the marriage certificates of his offspring but I could confidently claim the marriages as being the correct family as I recognised the names of the witnesses as being family members.

Also the name of the witness on my gt grandmother's marriage certificate lead to finding the correct family for her in the census. I hadn't been able to find her birth registration and she didn't seem to appear on any census at all!! There was a family I was leaning towards but she didn't appear as Charlotte on the census with them. One of the witnesses was a William Henry who I believed to be the son of this family.... and by some lateral thinking a brilliant researcher checked the military records for this guy and there she was on the record as one of his sisters along with the other sisters from the same family. So it turned out she was registered in 1879 as Maria (the birth certificate later confirmed it was the same family in Kensington), appeared on the 1881 as Eliza, the 1891 in an orphanage as Maria, still can't find her on the 1901 and her marriage certificate and the 1911 as Charlotte Maria.

Without that crucial witness name I would never have found her family!

You know Jonesey, I think that illustrates that sometimes you can learn as much from what is missing as from what is there.

Your record had no family or friends as witnesses, which immediately begs the question as to why. And mine had no father on marriage certificate. Most children on census reports are living with 2 parents, so this narrows it down considerably.

A pity Ancestry don't allow you to search specifying no father!!

Jan

To all new folks out there - be sure to glean everything you can from certs. I do tend to bang on about this a bit, but I have just had a breakthrough thanks to a witness on a marriage certificate and am jumping up and down here!

The first big clue was the lack of a father's name. This may sound odd, but that prompted me to look for a Mary Ann Lewis with no father. I had year and place of birth from census reports after her marriage. Despite the common name, I found a possibility living as a step-daughter with parents Mary and James Titley.

And there it was - one of the witnesses is a Mary Titley!! I have since found the marriage of Mary Lewis to James.

A big detective hunt but very satisfying!!

Jan