Find Ancestors

Top tip - using the Genes Reunited community

Welcome to the Genes Reunited community boards!

  • The Genes Reunited community is made up of millions of people with similar interests. Discover your family history and make life long friends along the way.
  • You will find a close knit but welcoming group of keen genealogists all prepared to offer advice and help to new members.
  • And it's not all serious business. The boards are often a place to relax and be entertained by all kinds of subjects.
  • The Genes community will go out of their way to help you, so don’t be shy about asking for help.

Boards

Quick Search

Single word search

Tools

Findmypast DNA Banner

Icons

  • New posts
  • No new posts
  • Thread closed
  • Stickied, new posts
  • Stickied, no new posts

Marriage Certificate

Login to Add Reply Watch This
ProfilePosted byOptionsPost Date

Janet

Janet Report 8 Jan 2017 16:18

I have a certified copy of a marriage cert. dated 25-10-2000,from the Sacred Heart Church in Belfast, signed by the secretary of the church.

The marriage took place 5-2-1921 Belfast between

Dacre Bruce Bartlett Dolan and Hannah Dale(They are called consenting parties)
Names of Witnesses Patrick and Elizabeth Dunne. Both couples addresses are given .No ages or parents names are given.

However I cannot find the marriage in the indexes.

Is there a clever person out there who could help me?
Janet

ArgyllGran

ArgyllGran Report 8 Jan 2017 16:38

Can't find anything, I'm afraid, Janet.

I'm not aware of civil registration records missing for 1921 in Belfast, but I've never found my mother-in-law's birth either.

Researching:
Old genealogists never die.....they just lose their census.

Janet

Janet Report 8 Jan 2017 17:25

Thanks ArgyllGran,

Do you think that, as the marriage was not registered that it would a legal marriage?

I ask this as he was already married using his correct name Dacre Bruce Doland in Mullingar in 1908 to a Maria Wardlaw.

We have always known that the second marriage was bigamous, but was it?

Janet

Kucinta

Kucinta Report 8 Jan 2017 18:08

Is it the other way around?

IE if the marriage has been officially discovered to be bigamous, would the record of it have been suppressed?

Researching:
Eayres (Northants/London) Walker (Surrey) Loveday (Northants) Moore (Tipperary)

ArgyllGran

ArgyllGran Report 8 Jan 2017 18:49

Results from Googling the question suggest that it wouldn't be removed or suppressed, at least not in England / Wales / Scotland. Don't know about Ireland.

Even if the marriage later turns out to have been bigamous or otherwise illegal, it was still a marriage which took place and therefore remains on file, but may have a note added.

But I can't find anything about how Northern Ireland would view the question.

Researching:
Old genealogists never die.....they just lose their census.

Janet

Janet Report 9 Jan 2017 10:29

Sorry for not replying earlier. Domestic duties have taken over.

The marriage was not discovered by the authorities. However when he brought both families home to England the second wife found out about the first wife. I understand that they did meet at some point.

Must go now more domestic duties, will log in later today.
Janet

ArgyllGran

ArgyllGran Report 9 Jan 2017 20:53

Very surprised that the church apparently didn't have an obligation to tell the authorities about any marriage performed there.

Researching:
Old genealogists never die.....they just lose their census.

Janet

Janet Report 10 Jan 2017 16:27

I am not surprised at all. This man seems to be able to get away with anything, short of murder that is. He soon left his '2nd' wife and two children, just as he had left wife no 1 and their four children. By 1939 he had another two women on the go at the same time.

I may add that looking at a photograph of him he was not oil painting.

Janet