From a while back…
Some records were created before an event took place, usually in preparation for the event itself. The issuance of a marriage license does not guarantee that the marriage ever took place. The announcement of marriage banns also is not evidence of the actual marriage.
Even a church bulletin announcing my baptism that day in church does not guarantee it took place. It does indicate the event was planned and scheduled for that day. And, in all likelihood, it did take place.
But if one document said something was going to happen and other reliable information indicated that event did not happen, remind yourself that not every event intended to be actually comes to pass.
2 Responses
I have a marriage where only the bond is filled out. The license, certificate & recording on the same page are all blank. They had a child about 11 months later, and were divorced 7 years later. [Thanks to full text search, I found the divorce.] I’ve checked all the surrounding county indexes, the county where the child was born, & newspapers for the marriage, all with no luck. The groom is elusive his whole life. A year after his divorce, in 1900 he is listed as a widow, he is not. He is missing in 1910 census, yet has a child with wife #2 in same county later in 1910. It’s a work in progress….
So true. I had a beautiful fraktur certificate made for my grandson’s baptism. Unfortunately it did not happen on that date because he wound up in the hospital. My daughter can’t remember his actual baptism date because she sees the framed certificate with the wrong date all the time. So it happens.