The question that I was looking to answer was what was the indexing practice when a widow remarrying used her previous married name. While I had my strong suspicions from experience, I couldn’t find confirmation of this in any of my usual sources, and had only a small sample immediately to hand.
In other words, I’m not just interested in this context in the information that appears in the register entry, but how this information is indexed, as that’s what we search on.
Apologies if I didn’t make it fully clear that it was only post 1854 such second or subsequent marriages that were of interest.
From all the examples kindly provided, I’m now confident that the situation was as follows:
1. The widow used her previous married surname, or, if a third or subsequent marriage, a married surname; then there is an index entry for the marriage under both that surname and her maiden name, i.e. the indexer took the time and trouble to extract the maiden surname from the parental information.
2. The widow used her maiden name, in which can there could only be an entry under that surname. A significant proportion of widows appear to have used their maiden name, and there are quite a few examples where someone known to the researcher to be a widow described herself as a spinster!
Given other exceptions in the register entries and the indexes in the period from 1856 until the situation stabilised in the late 1850s or early 1860s I suspect that there might be exceptions in that period, but would obviously need some samples from that period to be sure.
An interesting, and very obvious aspect with the benefit of hindsight (as always 20:20!) came out of the situation, deriving from the different situation in relation to the marriage registration process compared with the birth and death registration processes. For a regular marriage the couple didn’t turn up at the registrar’s office, before 1939 that is; the process being that the minister or celebrant filled in a schedule provided by the registrar; this schedule (they still exist at NRH, but can only be accessed if a legal need can be demonstrated) was then taken into the registrar who transcribed the details from the schedule into the marriage register.
As could be expected, very few widows signed the schedule as “Jean SMITH or BROWN”, so that the signature normally uses the maiden or married surname.
However, if the bride couldn’t sign her name and made a mark, then it appears to be the case that there was often the entry under the mark, - Jean SMITH or BROWN. It might well be the case that if it was a third marriage that the entry would be then Jean SMITH, formerly CLARK, or BROWN.
Obviously this depends on the celebrant being aware of a previous marriage. I’d imagine that most couples would be open and honest about the situation, as long as the correct questions were asked, but if they weren’t, or the fact of a previous marriage wasn’t disclosed for whatever reason, then the celebrant couldn’t enter the appropriate information on the schedule, and there wouldn’t be the appropriate index entry.
For irregular marriages, by Sheriff’s Warrant or other such routes to arrive at an entry in the register of marriages, I’d anticipate that the situation might be similar….
Anybody got any examples ??
Can anyone think of any quirks or aspects of the system that I haven’t covered? Comments greatly appreciated.
In incidentally, I’m not interested in this context in the situation that pertained after the Marriage (Scotland) Act 1939.
Very many thanks for the quite fantastic and speedy response
David
Phew...I'm exhausted......