British marriage certificates
This is a general question about the information recorded. I have some marriage certificates they all have names of the fathers of the couple who married. One of them has 'deceased' for one of the fathers. Was this standard practice when a father was dead? I am asking because I am trying to decide if a father on another certificate was alive at the time of the marriage. if it was common practice to list if the father was dead, can I assume/hope the person was alive on the date of his son's marriage?
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Re: British marriage certificates
The short answer is YES and NO. If the father is dead it should say so on the cert. BUT it depends on the person registering the marriage to ask the question in a way that the respondant understood. It also dependson on the parties concerned hearing the question correctly amid the hustle and excitment of a wedding, and giving the right answer. If it says he was dead then he most probably was (there are occasions when the couple wished to distance themselves from a 'difficult' father). But if it does not say then you can not tell. Rob
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Re: British marriage certificates
I have 5 marriage certificates for the same extended family all from the same church, 3 say deceased, 2 don't, none of the fathers are the same person, I mean they aren't marriages of children of the same father.
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Re: British marriage certificates
I have two marriage certificates for my father, the first one is when he marry in 1932 to is first wife, which he put is father as deceased, but I think this was because he had not seen him seen 1904 when he left his mother, but later found out he did not die till 1946, so when he married again in 1963 he was right to put himm as deceased
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Re: British marriage certificates
I have found a couple of my relatives had deceased for their fathers, but fathers were still alive. They had lost contact with father at an early age when mother separated.
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Re: British marriage certificates
Yes it was standard to put the father dead on the certificate
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Re: British marriage certificates
If a person had not been seen or had had communication with the family for seven years then that person was "presumed dead".
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Re: British marriage certificates
I have the marriage certificates of three brothers. Two said their father was dead but the other didn't, but he definitely had died
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Re: British marriage certificates
It all depends upon how and what the marrying parties were asked. If they were just asked for the father's name and occupation, it may not have occurred to them to mention that a father was deceased. The BMD tutorial at http://home.clara.net/dixons/Certificates/indexbd.htm may prove helpful.
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Re: British marriage certificates
on certificate I have from 1888 fo my g-g-grandparents the grooms father is down as 'Illegitimate' but when tracing the famly back to 1861 census i find the father is named.
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