Moonfleetonline

rom the 1901 census, their eldest son was born in 1897, so I started looking around that year. Again I used Ancestry, using the England and Wales BMD index on the home page and then selecting the

Partial FreeBMD Indexes & Images 1837-1983

option. (Clicking the link on the right hand column of this page will take yo straight to the FreeBMD page.) This is much easier to search than the Complete Index which transcribes the marriage registers for the whole country, but provides no connection between spouses.

I searched on my great grandmother’s name since her Christian name is fairly unusual and found a likely entry listed for 1898. By clicking the

View Record link

and then choosing the

click to see others on page

option, I was able to confirm this was the right entry since my great grandfathers name is there.

By clicking on the

view image link

shows a facsimile of the registry, but it is simply an alphabetical list so that bride and groom are listed separately with the bride listed under her maiden surname and the groom under his surname.

This search has shown that the marriage was registered in the second quarter of 1898. Their eldest son was four at the time of the 1901 census showing that the marriage took place after his birth. Although we think of the Victorians as being extremely prudish about these matters, it was fairly common for marriages to post-date the birth of the first child. If was even more common for a child to born only a few months after the marriage and this usually attracted relatively little stigma, after all the parents had ‘done the right thing’. However, this might explain why my great grandfather was supposedly disowned by his family but is far from conclusive proof.

I'll now go research the 1881 census and see what I can find there.