Genealogy Chat

How do you find a name of a Spouse when you only have the Husband's name ....eg Arthur Blog (ficticious) married to Joan (1901 Census ) How do you find Joan's Surname . I am totally stuck and cannot go back on that line . Thank you if you can advise .

You try and find their marriage or order a birth cert for one of the children. If you list the details here, perhaps we can help you. Rose

Are there any children in 1901? The age of the eldest should give a clue to a possible marriage date.......... Obviously, the birth cert of any child will tell you MMN........... Do you want to post names, so that we can help? Reg

You can do a spouse search on FreeBMD. Put in the husbands name in the first two boxes, and the wifes first name in the 4th box. If you know when-ish, you can narrow down the search with dates. (eg, if they were married between 1891 and 1901, put those dates in) That will give you a short list (hopefully!) and you can go from there, based on where they were living and when the first child was born.

Most of the time, if you just look at the year of birth for the oldest child and then look for marriages around that time (normally no more than about a year before) for the man and then see if there are any females with the same first name. The other thing to help you check if it's the right one is the place that the first child was born and the place the marriage took place. EG If there are two possibles, one in Q1 1876 in Preston and the other one in Q2 1876 in London and you know the first child was born in Preston, then it's more than likely to be the first marriage that is yours. Hope that helps.

I would like to thank you all for your help . As searching my family tree has been rather difficult . I will take your advice . Applying for the eldest child birth certificate will probably be the way to go . Thank you again Marie