incomplete marriage certificate

[sigma]

Why wouldn't a marriage certificate show details of the brides father. The certificate is from 1838 and no comment or remark is made under "father name & surname"

[Barmaid]

Most likely reason is that the bride was illegitimate.

[Schutzengel]

I think the most likely reason would be that the mother was unmarried, and the father of the child refused to acknowledge that the child was his.

[Schutzengel]

Just another thought. The bride could have been 'adopted' as a child, and unaware of her biological parent/parents. As during the 1800s and early 1900s 'adoptions' often happened just by taking on a child to bring up, without ever being legally registered. If the new 'parents' never revealed her origins to the child, then there would have been no way she could have found out. The children in these cases were often illegitimate. But as late as the 1950s, if a daughter became pregnant, her parents often brought up her baby as the sister or brother of the birth mother, and the father's name was never revealed. Very few people knew the truth apart from close family. This was due to the family wishing to hide 'the disgrace' as it was seen at that time.

[Schutzengel]

Another thought. During the 1800s in areas where there were many very poor people, sometimes when a family had 5 or 6 children or more, that they couldn't afford to provide for. Sometime the youngest child would be taken by a relative to bring up as their own, and nothing was ever told to the child about this unofficial arrangement.

[dot.hawkes]

What you could do is go and look at the parish register entry, which will be either still at the church or in the County Record Office, and see if the vicar added anything, that is assuming it was a Church service, if it was a register office wedding then the copy you have is all there was to copy, you could also look pre 1837 for the brides baptism, which often would have been in the same church as her wedding. Again, if she was baptised to a single mother, a father nay have been named in the entry. Civil registartion only started in 1837 and so you only have a baptiosm to look for .

[sigma]

I have certificates that state "father deceased" or "father unknown" so "adoption" seems the most probable. Looks like I'll have to view the parish records.

[dot.hawkes]

what about another scenario? In my tree I have a William haswkes marrying and giving his father as Harris Hawkes. Many years later after failing to identify a william, I found that William was the son of harsis hawkes' eldest daughter Amelia and on william's birth entry the father is not given, which made him illegitimate. william was brought up my his natural father (apparently) who married amelia when william was 9 months old, and william was brought up with his mothers married name, but when he was 16 he left bhome , went to london, and used his birth name. He used his grandfather's name as his father for some reason on that marriage certiicate, but he was not legally allowed to. there are so many complex family issues that we can only now through oral history, which is why when i first began researching the Hawkes family in 1987 I was told by my father-in-law that the surname should be Haddock, that was the surname of William's natural father, and Amelias married name. Adoption is the last scenario I woul consider at that period in time.

[carolegif]

One of my genealogy group had a great great grandmother who had named her father as father to all of her 13 children! It turned out that because she was asked to name the father, she named hers instead of the children's father!