Make certain you have completely tracked children your step-ancestor might have had with spouses besides your direct line ancestor. After my ancestor‘s second wife died, she his second wife married again and she had a child with that husband. Tracking down the second wife, her second husband, and their child may lead to something that helps me search the actual ancestor.
Or maybe not.
But I don’t know if I don’t look.
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6 Responses
Did you mean to say after your ancestor’s second *husband* died, she remarried?
No, but there was a glaring typo in the post and I’ve corrected it. Thanks for catching it.
Hmmm, can you explain how the deceased second wife could remarry? Or did you mean to say the widowed husband remarried?
I think I have this fixed now 😉 The second wife of the ancestor married again after he died and had a child with that husband.
If you change “died” to “death” it will say that after your ancestor’s death his second wife remarried. Explaining sequences of events can be a tangle of language.
I have one cousin-group where there was a chain of seven marriages, and the Census enumerators did not always get the relationships and surnames right for the resulting complicated households. And maybe the children involved were not all that clear about who exactly were their and/or their half-siblings’ birth-parents. Following such trails depends on existence of a fairly (or at least partially) accurate string of records. Luck and an open mind also help.
You are absolutely correct that a series of marriages for both the husband and wife can be confusing–even when all the records are located. It is easy to see how a family member or census taker can get confused when there are a household may have several children, most of whom are half siblings to each other.