If you think you are at a brick wall on a certain ancestor or relative, ask yourself: is it possible this person had a short-term marriage that I don’t know about? That marriage could have ended with the death of a spouse shortly after the marriage or a divorce not long after the wedding ceremony. If the short marriage did not result in offspring and it’s ending was highly dramatic, it’s very possible that no one in the family later mentioned it. And it can make records confusing.
Relatives don’t always tell you everything–sometimes because they don’t want you to know it and sometimes because they don’t know it.
And…that short marriage confusing your research might be a “first” one. It could be a marriage towards the end of someone’s life that’s messing with you research. That’s especially true for a woman who changed her name upon marriage. Late in life marriages can be short if someone’s “up in years.” It’s also possible that their tolerance for behavior is less than it was in an earlier marriage and the couple is more likely to divorce.
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