David -- I did say "These things happen. Just want to be clear"! And yes, certainly you corrected the misinformation (which you kind of needed to if you wanted more information/help!), and true, somebody might google some day and find this thread with info about *their* Pascoes.
(And yes, that certainly does happen.) Slightly put out, yes, but hardly unforgiving! And I still don't understand where the info about the non-existent 1873 marriage came from.
Our fault too for not checking that info straight off, which could have raised the right questions earlier. It sounded, to me at least, like you actually *knew* things like the family's emigration to the US and so on.
Note that I didn't suggest getting the 1849 marriage certificate -- I said you need Emma's own marriage certificate to be sure of her father's name and her age. But I qualified that by saying that you really need a birth certificate for one of her children to be absolutely sure of her birth surname and her husband's name.
It helps us to know your connection with the person you are researching. If you are descended from one of her children, and that line is known for sure (the child's marriage, that child's child and his/her marriage ...), then we have a better idea of what to advise. If that is the case, and you don't have the birth certificate of the child of Emma you descend from, that really is where you need to start.
The info about Emma's birth surname sounds reliable (since it matches up with census and birth records for someone by that name), but you need confirmation in the form of certificates, and the birth certificate of a known child is where to start. (Sometimes parish baptism records can serve the purpose, but they will seldom give the mother's full name, and they don't seem to be available here for anything to do with Emma herself.)
Assumptions are never a good place to start. For instance, we don't even know that John Meager married Elizabeth Pollard in 1849; he could have married Sarah Goldsworthy, Rosina Johns or Mary Thomas.
This is from a search at FreeBMD which is always the best starting point:
http://freebmd.rootsweb.com/cgi/search.plSearch for a marriage between John Meager and Elizabeth, then click on the page number of the result to see the list of brides and grooms on the page -- before 1911, the GRO index doesn't say who on the page married whom, and that particular page has four brides and four grooms. Searching later censuses for couples can indicate who married whom, but only the certificate will say for sure.
Without Emma's birth certificate, you can't be sure that she wasn't really a niece of John Meager whom the couple took in and reared as their own, just for instance. (In a case like that, the person might well have then named the 'adoptive' father as their father on their marriage certificate, so the marriage certificate alone isn't strictly adequate.)
Once you have
- a birth certificate for Emma's child showing Emma's birth surname and her husband's name
- Emma's marriage certificate showing her age and father's name
- Emma's birth certificate showing her mother's full name
then you can go back to her parents' marriage and beyond.
Yes, it's a bit of an expensive business, but it's what we all need to do to be sure we're on the right track.
There are some non-conformist baptisms at the Cornwall OPC site:
http://www.cornwall-opc-database.org/search-database/baptisms-non-conformist/but none for children of John Meager.
Hm, I'm still not sure where you're getting the parents' names from. The only thing I see at FamilySearch is the census record showing an Emma Meager with parents John and Rosina ... who would be the Rosina Johns in the list of brides in 1849 ... who also have son John, two years older than Emma ... This baptism for Rosina Adelaide Johns, 1831 Helston, daughter of Samuel and Sarah (probably Sarah Petherick, married 1828 Helston), fits Rosina Johns, but again, you would need the marriage certificate to be sure of her age and father's name (after confirming Emma's parents' names as outlined above):
http://www.cornwall-opc-database.org/search-database/more-info/?t=baptisms&id=1746507It really would be best if you told us where the info you are relying on has come from, since I, at least, can't seem to replicate any of it.
edit to add: I'm in Canada so I'm not familiar with the process of getting certificates from local register offices. It's easy and convenient to order them by mail here:
http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/It takes a good couple of weeks to get the certificates that way, of course. Also, never ever order from third parties (like Ancestry), as you will pay double the cost for no added value.