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US Lookup Requests / Re: James Edward Higgins / John DeRose
« on: Thursday 29 November 12 17:48 GMT (UK) »
Interesting stuff!
Here's my explanation for the marriage/birth records. John DeRose's daughters were born in the late 1920s. There's a 95 year confidentiality period for birth records. Therefore, births after 1917 are not yet publicly available in the NB archives. If John and Evelyn were married outside of NB, there would be no record of their marriage in the NB archives. Also - if they were married in a small private ceremony (Minister's house, for example), it's possible that the paperwork for their marriage never found its way into an official register. It wasn't unusual, back in the day, for marriage records not to end up in the archives. So - probably no conspiracy!
It's reasonable to assume that unless James and Evelyn divorced (and there's no evidence of this) that James died at least a couple of years before Evelyn married John DeRose and started having children with him. John and Evelyn's daughters were born between 1926 and late 1928 (since John had 3 children under the age of 3 at the time of his death in January 1929 - assuming the rootsweb posting to be accurate). Therefore, it's likely that James died in the early 1920s and that he died before his mother's death in June 1926. If James died violently (the card game cheating) and under scandalous circumstances, perhaps the Higgins family didn't want anyone to know about this (or even that James was dead) and therefore included him in his mother's obit as living in the US.
Here's my explanation for the marriage/birth records. John DeRose's daughters were born in the late 1920s. There's a 95 year confidentiality period for birth records. Therefore, births after 1917 are not yet publicly available in the NB archives. If John and Evelyn were married outside of NB, there would be no record of their marriage in the NB archives. Also - if they were married in a small private ceremony (Minister's house, for example), it's possible that the paperwork for their marriage never found its way into an official register. It wasn't unusual, back in the day, for marriage records not to end up in the archives. So - probably no conspiracy!
It's reasonable to assume that unless James and Evelyn divorced (and there's no evidence of this) that James died at least a couple of years before Evelyn married John DeRose and started having children with him. John and Evelyn's daughters were born between 1926 and late 1928 (since John had 3 children under the age of 3 at the time of his death in January 1929 - assuming the rootsweb posting to be accurate). Therefore, it's likely that James died in the early 1920s and that he died before his mother's death in June 1926. If James died violently (the card game cheating) and under scandalous circumstances, perhaps the Higgins family didn't want anyone to know about this (or even that James was dead) and therefore included him in his mother's obit as living in the US.