Food for Thought???

[Cornish Terrier]

Here is something to think about for all those people out there who seem to be under the impression that grooms married at age 25 and brides at age 21!

If you look closely at IGI/FamilySearch you will find many marriage events where the names of the bride and groom are known but no marriage data has been found. In the majority of these cases you will find 'abt xxxx' offering an approximate year of marriage. If you look further you will find that there are birth/baptism dates or birth years noted for both bride and groom. And if you do some quick arithmetic you will find that, in the majority of cases, the approximate year of marriage equates to the groom being age 25 and the bride age 21!

For some time now I have been working through FreeBMD trying to create a useable index of marriages for Illogan, Redruth, Redruth Registry Office, Penzance Registry Office and the Non-conformist Chapels. At the very least I want to be able to try and match up the correct grooms and brides. To help with this I need to check Ancestry Family Trees, baptism records, Census records and even records such as the Victorian and South Australian Birth Indexes.

While working on marriages for Redruth St Uny in 1866 I found this group:-

December Qtr 1866 Page 405 Redruth St Uny –

DUNSTON Elizabeth
MICHELL Stephen
MORCOM Jane
NICHOLLS Joseph

Of the two marriages involved I could find nothing in Ancestry trees and so don’t have any dates and I also did not know which bride belonged with which groom. But a look at the 1871 Census provided the answer:-

1871 Census
Michell’s Row, Redruth
Stephen MICHELL, head, married, 72, retired assayer, Redruth
Elizabeth do., wife, married, 38, Wendron
Mary Roberts do., daughter, 4, Redruth
Elizabeth do., daughter, 8 mths, Redruth

Here we have a man who would have been age about 67 at the time marrying a woman then age about 33. And the when the two children were born the father would have been age 68 and 71 respectively!!

This example should help dispel the myth about when people got married and had children!!!

CT

[spikeharwood]

Oh dear, I've been using 20 for the bride. I'll have to make a one year adjustment!
I'm not sure that your 67 year old is a good example, it's gonna be different for the third or fourth marriage.
We could of course use the results of your Redruth marriages research to get a brand new average age of grooms and brides to replace the old 25/21.

Anyways, love your work. Thanks from me and I'm sure a lot more members here.
Now back to the red wine

[Cornish Terrier]

Sorry Spike - I neglected to check whether Stephen had been married before! The key point here is that the 1871 Census shows a married couple with ages 72 and 38 along with two children age 4 and 8mths with nothing in that record to suggest anything other than a first marriage. However ............. I will check on that point in a moment.

Perhaps also I could have broadened the point I was trying to make by including the often scoffed at thought of, espccially in those days, someone of an age anywhere near 72 getting married and fathering children.

But ... having now looked at the 1861 Census I see that Stephen Michell was indeed married before. In that year he was also living at Michell's Row Redruth with then wife Mary who was then age 63. And in the household were two children - John age 27 and Mary age 22. It seems that once Mary died and the 'children' wandered off that Stephen found himself a little lonely and in need of the sound of the patter of little feet around the house again!
If we look at Stephen's marriage of 1866 we find that Elizabeth Dunstan had not been married before and in fact she appears to have been born at Wendron in 1832 to Benjamin and Elizabeth Dunstan with whom she was still living in 1861.

So Elizabeth has come to my rescue by waiting until about age 34 to get married and start having kids!!

[Cornish Terrier]

Well folks ..... it's time to throw in another one!

This time we have the marriage in 1869 of John GAY and Jane BARNICOAT. I don't have as much information yet as I would like but at this stage I believe this marriage took place at the Redruth Registry Office on July 10th 1869. On checking for this couple in the 1871 Census I found:-

Treskillard, Illogan
John GAY, head, mar., 66, mason, St Mawes
Jane do., wife, mar., 20, Wendron

Ancestry family trees show a number of children followed.

Looking back at the 1861 Census I found that John Gay was a widower with two children living at home - daughter Martha age 20 and son William age 19.

Seems there is no stopping some of these old blighters!!!