Who married who?

I rather enjoyed myself the other day when my sister asked me for help to solve a little puzzle.  It's always a good feeling when one can find the solution to a little mystery.

Returning to researching her husband's family tree after a couple of years' break, Angie reviewed her previous progress and found that she had Samuel Heys married to Kate Jane Hemus in 1892 (as did several people with public trees on Ancestry - possibly all copied from my sister's!) but with the aid of the new indexes at the GRO site, she found that Samuel's children had a mother with the maiden name of Fallows.  There were no listings with the same reference for both Samuel Heys and a female Fallows, but there was a Clarissa Fallows married in the same district, same quarter, but with a different page number.

There were only 3 entries on the page which included Clarissa, but 5 entries on Samuel's page, suggesting that perhaps the index entry for Samuel had the wrong page number.  So Angie then looked for Samuel in the 1911 Census and saw from the transcript that he wife's name was Christine.  She asked me if her reasoning was correct and that Christine and Clarissa were one and the same.

My first move was to look up Alfred Bright Sear, one of the marriage entries, in the 1911 Census.    I chose him because his name was fairly distinctive and the 1911 Census because middle names are most likely to appear there.  Alfred showed up as having been married for only 14 years, but he had a 17-yr-old daughter, suggesting a previous marriage; and what's more, his daughter's name was Kate Jane!  So I then turned to the GRO website and found that Kate Jane's mother's maiden name was indeed Hemus.  (Incidentally, Kate Jane senior died the same year her daughter was born, so possibly as a result of childbirth complications.)

Next I looked up Samuel Heys in the 1911 Census and again I looked at the image, not just the transcription.  (Sometimes we have to make do with a transcription, but always look at the original or an image of it, if possible.)  I read that Samuel and his wife Catherine had only been married for 10 years, but his children were 18, 16 and 14.  Back to FreeBMD to look for a marriage of Samuel Heys to a Catherine in about 1901 and find entries for Samuel Heys and Catherine White in December Q 1901.

The last step was to look for the death of Clarissa Heys, sometime between the marriage in 1892 and Samuel's marriage in 1901.   Fortunately, Clarissa Heys is not a common name and there is only one entry in that period - June Q 1900.

It's worth nothing that I used 3 different websites to work on this problem, although 2 would have done: Ancestry or FindMyPast have the 1911 Census and Marriage Indexes but only the GRO site has mother's maiden name on the Birth Indexes prior to the September quarter of 1911.  Contrary to what's implied in the television advertisements, just typing your name in Ancestry does not reveal everything you want to know about your forbears!  And especially if you blindly copy what others have written, rather than doing your own research!

Until next time ... cheers!