A few weeks ago, I posted about a second marriage involving my grandmother and a mystery man. I ordered the marriage certificate online from the Clark County, Nevada Recorder's office and it arrived rather quickly.
Unfortunately, it did not have that much information on it and it kind of got lost in the shuffle since I received several information laden documents from the Family History Library the next day. Basically, I got distracted.
I did sent out an email with a copy of the scanned image to my aunts and uncles speculating that this could be the correct person, but that I couldn't know for sure. I was rewarded with several emails of confirmation that this was the right guy. The name seem to have triggered some memories because there were stories I had never heard before. They were not good ones either. I seem to have opened up a can of worms.
I guess this is the risk we take when we do more recent research. Bad feelings were brought forth that had been buried for awhile. One of my relatives asked that we just forget he ever existed. Unfortunately, I can't do that being the way that I am, however, I can just enter the facts of the record and move on. I don't have a lot of curiosity at this point about where this man ended up and what happened with him, and I certainly don't feel a need to dredge up awful memories for my family out of respect for them. I think for the time being, I will let this fact just remain what it is ... a fact only.
© copyright Monica Palmer, 2011
Showing posts with label Research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Research. Show all posts
11 June 2011
17 May 2011
The Elusive Second Marriage
[Note: I am not including any names in this post to protect the privacy of living individuals.]
My grandmother married an unknown man between my biological grandfather and my step-grandfather. The marriage was short, according to the children, lasting only about six months. None of the children seem to remember his name, however, there is a sense of mystery and gloom surrounding this person.
In my search to find a marriage record for my grandmother and biological grandfather, I had come up empty on the online sources for California. On FamilySearch.org I tried the database California, County Marriages, 1850-1952. I had no luck, so I moved on to Ancestry.com's "California Marriages, 1850-1960." This database indicated that it was not inclusive of all the counties and even though the source information cited the time period as 1850-1960, the title of the database was "California Marriages, 1850-1877." I did a search anyway, but wasn't surprised when I had no results.
Knowing that my grandmother was under 18 when she got married, I thought that maybe they ventured over to Reno or Las Vegas and decided to check the Ancestry.com "Nevada Marriage Index, 1956-2005." To be honest, I didn't even look at the dates on the database and I'm glad that I didn't! If I had, I would have disregarded the database altogether because my grandmother married my grandfather sometime in the mid to late 1940s.
I decided to search through the index manually instead of entering in his last name so that way I could get a look at all of the people with the same last name. As I was scanning through them, I found, to my surprise, an entry with my grandmother's full married name (first husband). Could this be the elusive second husband?? The index was difficult to read, but if the indexed date was correct, the timing would be perfect as it fit neatly between her first and third marriage, which spanned between two years!
I quickly went to the Clark County (NV) Recorder's Office website and found the same record on their marriage search website. It took a bit of adjusting some of the settings, but it finally came up. You can order the certificate right online, but alas, I have to wait until the next payday to order mine. Then I will have to wait until the order is processed! Even though I hate waiting, it will be exciting to check the mail every day! I will write more about this when the record is received. This certificate could be the answer to some of the questions my family has about this mysterious second marriage.
© copyright Monica Palmer, 2011
My grandmother married an unknown man between my biological grandfather and my step-grandfather. The marriage was short, according to the children, lasting only about six months. None of the children seem to remember his name, however, there is a sense of mystery and gloom surrounding this person.
In my search to find a marriage record for my grandmother and biological grandfather, I had come up empty on the online sources for California. On FamilySearch.org I tried the database California, County Marriages, 1850-1952. I had no luck, so I moved on to Ancestry.com's "California Marriages, 1850-1960." This database indicated that it was not inclusive of all the counties and even though the source information cited the time period as 1850-1960, the title of the database was "California Marriages, 1850-1877." I did a search anyway, but wasn't surprised when I had no results.
Knowing that my grandmother was under 18 when she got married, I thought that maybe they ventured over to Reno or Las Vegas and decided to check the Ancestry.com "Nevada Marriage Index, 1956-2005." To be honest, I didn't even look at the dates on the database and I'm glad that I didn't! If I had, I would have disregarded the database altogether because my grandmother married my grandfather sometime in the mid to late 1940s.
I decided to search through the index manually instead of entering in his last name so that way I could get a look at all of the people with the same last name. As I was scanning through them, I found, to my surprise, an entry with my grandmother's full married name (first husband). Could this be the elusive second husband?? The index was difficult to read, but if the indexed date was correct, the timing would be perfect as it fit neatly between her first and third marriage, which spanned between two years!
I quickly went to the Clark County (NV) Recorder's Office website and found the same record on their marriage search website. It took a bit of adjusting some of the settings, but it finally came up. You can order the certificate right online, but alas, I have to wait until the next payday to order mine. Then I will have to wait until the order is processed! Even though I hate waiting, it will be exciting to check the mail every day! I will write more about this when the record is received. This certificate could be the answer to some of the questions my family has about this mysterious second marriage.
© copyright Monica Palmer, 2011
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