Ancestors who never actually married.

[Watson]

Children baptized to seemingly married parents appear to have been more common in populous London parishes.  The baptism entry sometimes reads as if they were married, the only difference being that they weren't.  This can be done with a view to maintaining a respectable appearance.  They would be less likely to get away with this in a smaller parish, where people are recognized.

[Little Nell]

Two sets of my great-grandparents never married - to each other that is.

One great-grandmother was married twice, but failed to marry my great-grandfather.  He failed to marry either of his "wives" but his own parents did not set a good example.  They were baptising children for 16 years before they decided to make the relationship official.  I don't understand why they did not marry - both were free to do so.  Her first husband was dead, as was his first 'wife.'  I can only think that he was not a fan of the church. 

The other couple did not marry, since my great-grandmother was already married, but to a man who committed a crime which probably made her a pariah within her wider family.  They moved from one side of London to the other and kept the situation hidden, although there were a few suspicions. It's taken a long time to prove those suspicions - and it was newspaper reports that helped to unravel it all.

Nell

[coombs]

Of course there may be a page missing in the parish register etc, or one of them wed under an alias.

[mcleeds]

My GGG-grandmother (IIRC) was called Isabella Lee, she married a Robert Bramham in Pontefract about 1870.

She was from Edinburgh around 1845, and her dad was a James Tod (who I otherwise have no record of). RC found an Isabella Tod, aged 5 in 1851, in Leith at the same household as her mother, Isabella Lees.

In view of the apparently fluid names, and there being no sign of James Tod on the census, I can only assume that Isabella born 1845 in Edinburgh was illegitimate.

[coombs]

I have Isaac Bradford in my tree, born 1812 in Southchurch, Essex, he wed (perhaps) a woman from Linton in Derbyshire in about 1846 as he worked on the railways. Her maiden name was Russell, info gathered from their son William's birth cert in Moira, Leicestershire in 1848. I have tried and tried and never found the marriage of Isaac Bradford to Ann Russel, variants checked and all that jazz.

[Deirdre784]

One of my husband’s ggg grandmothers had a baby (1864) with her husband to be. Baby died as did 3 more children. Mum and 3 year old daughter appear 50 miles away, child’s death (1873) registered by an unknown at the time male. Husband still alive.

Mum and new partner have 5 children in 6 years, 3 died, then 3 months after the birth of the youngest child (1882) she married another man as a widow  (husband and ‘partner’ still alive).

Husband died, and 18 months later (1895) she married, again as a widow, a man who turned out to be my husband’s ggg grandfather from a different line (his wife had died the previous year). Her first husband and her partner both still alive. Both died before her.

To confuse matters further, her death (1921) was registered by one of her 2 surviving children (my husband’s gg grandmother) but probate was granted to a still unknown man who had been lodging with them in 1911, and arranged her burial - with her 2nd husband, third being buried elsewhere with his wife.

Partner and third husband both used 2 names at various times to really cause confusion 🙄