Marrying of Cousins

In a 30 December 2016 post on his blog, Genealogy’s Star, James Tanner discussed whether there is a prohibition of cousins marrying: Can you marry your cousin? What is or was the law?

James described what the current law is in Utah, where he lives. He also cited the restrictions imposed by the Roman Catholic Church under Canon Law. In both instances marriage is prohibited between first cousins, except in very unusual circumstances.

I wondered what the rules were for the Church of England, particularly in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, since I have a few examples in my family of first cousins marrying, including my own 4^th great-grandparents – married in 1791 in Devon, England. I had thought about the question before but had not bothered to look up the answer.

In my search for information I came across a paper on the subject by Jill Durey, The Church, Consantuinity and Trollope, in the Churchman, v. 122 (Summer 2008), pp. 125-46. The Churchman is the international journal of theology produced by the (Anglican) Church Society.

The Church of England, of course, was set up in 1534 specifically to allow Henry VIII to dump his first wife and marry a cousin. He employed some devious means to get around the prohibitions of the Catholic Church, setting up his own church with different rules on the matter of marriage. In so doing he had his daughter, Mary Tudor, from his first marriage, declared as illegitimate. (She eventually got her own back after taking the thrown, when she annulled Henry’s “divorce.” But that’s another story.)

In any event, as part of the establishment of the Church of England, marriage between cousins was allowed. Over the years there have been other Church of England regulations that controlled who could marry who. I blogged about one such example, on 15 September 2013, of a man who married his deceased wife’s sister – Mistaken Assumptions from Register Notes.

List of prohibited unions in Church of England, and the changes made over time: Genetic and Quantitative Aspects of Genealogy website - No cousins are mentioned.

There have been many studies about whether cousins marrying have an adverse biological effect on offspring. Certainly inbreeding over long periods of time can lead to unwanted and undesirable physical and or mental conditions. Recessive traits can manifest themselves because the genetic makeup of the individuals is similar. Offspring may be more likely to exhibit conditions that might otherwise be overridden by more dominant traits. Where a family has no prior history of birth defects or other deleterious conditions, though, it is unlikely they would appear because of the union of closely-related cousins. It is possible children may actually be healthier as a result of inheriting strong attributes from both parents having similar familial traits.

The idea of prohibiting the marriage of related people, of course, developed within small tribes or communities to prevent inbreeding over several generations and a general deterioration of the gene pool. It was a practice decided long before the study of genetics but it was solidly based on observation. At any rate almost every religion organized since has kept the policy in the form of rules under which adherents must abide.

King Henry made the exceptions acceptable by replacing the dominant religion in his domain with a new one, certainly with his own personal intentions in mind. The result was that the prohibition of cousin marriage was made acceptable for the first time in Europe. It had long been allowed in Middle East. Marriage of cousins was also permissible, and widely practiced in China for many centuries, but has been banned under the current regime. In many parts of the world culture plays at least as strong a role as religion.

In the United States the rules are very different from state to state no doubt based on the views of the original settlers.

In Canada, the law is relatively simple and parallels, as one might have assumed, the rules of the Church of England: “…persons related by consanguinity, affinity or adoption are not prohibited from marrying each other by reason only of their relationship, but no person shall marry another person if they are related lineally, or as brother or sister or half-brother or half-sister, including by adoption.  A marriage between persons who are related in this manner is void.” From Marriage (Prohibited) Act.

As James Tanner pointed out, the subject is worth investigating in the various parts of the world where family research is being undertaken in order to understand the legalities of inter-cousin marriage but in particular how local rules may have impacted particular family members.

Other References:

See these articles for more references on the subject.

Cousin marriage (Wikipedia) The maps shown above were sourced from this website.

Prohibited degree of kinship (Wikipedia)

Wayne Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program in England, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy in several family history society journals. He has also served as an editor of two such publications. Wayne provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated

Using the GRO Index Search – Another Example

Happy New Year to all my readers! We took the opportunity to enjoy a nice break over Christmas to visit children and grandchildren in China and Vancouver. Now it’s back home and back to reading, research and writing.

In my last few posts before the holiday I commented on the use of searches of indexes of the General Record Office (GRO) for England and Wales, especially to find the maiden names of the mothers of individuals born since 1837. I have continued to find the resource of great value in establishing the identity of many family members.

As the Online Parish Clerk for the parish of Plympton St. Mary, Devon, I had a recent request from a family researcher to see if I could find information about a family who had lived in the area in the mid-1800s.

What he thought was that: William Collings may or may not have been born in Plympton St. Mary about 1815; his wife, Mary Ann, was born there about 1829; and all their children were born in the parish. He provided a list of seven children born between 1852 and 1871. Mary Ann’s maiden name was not known, which he was also interested in learning.

Very quickly I found the family on the 1861 England census, living in Plympton St. Mary with their first four children. William had been born in Sowton, Devon. I also found them all on the baptism register for the parish. Many of the entries also had their birth dates. I was able to show there were actually eight children born to the couple. A daughter born in 1868 died in 1869, though. The eighth child was named for the deceased sibling.

 

1851 England Census - Collings family in Plympton St Mary, Devon

None of the children had second names that might give a clue as to their mother's maiden name. I tried a search of the GRO index for all of the children and found most of the births were registered in Plympton RD with a mother's name of KENT. That led me back to the parish baptism record where I found Mary Ann Kent, daughter of John and Betsey Kent, baptized 19 April 1829. I was able to give the researcher most of the GRO registration data from which, if he wished, he could order the birth certificates.

The researcher also was looking for information on one of the sons of William and Mary Ann, Frederick, born in 1857. Because of what was shown on the census, he believed Frederick had a son named Harry F., but he could not find any information as to a wife/mother. The problem with his logic was that the census showed Frederick as being single. Sometimes information can be entered in error. To check his status I looked for him on the 1901 census and found him living with his mother and still single.

 

1891 England Census - Collings family in Plympton St Mary, Devon

The census did show Harry was born in Plympton, Devon. A search of the GRO birth index found an entry for Harry Ford Collings with a mother's name of Ford.

A search of FreeBMD for a Collings/Ford marriage found that a Charles Collings had married Mary Jane Ford in 1885. Charles was Frederick’s brother, so it seemed then that Harry Ford was their son, not Frederick's.

I have not yet found a marriage for William Collings and Mary Ann Kent. I am wondering whether she was briefly married before and then whether she might then have been registered with a different surname. Another possibility is that William’s name was not indexed correctly or at all. On the FreeBMD marriage index for the March 1848 quarter, there are three females listed – one named Mary Kent, but only two males. The date is about right and Sowton, where William Collings grew up, is part of the St. Thomas Registration District. One way to find out is to order the marriage certificate for Mary Kent and see who the husband was. It’s a bit of a longshot that I will leave to those actually researching the family.

The point here is that, with the new GRO search resource, two problems were quickly solved: we learned the maiden name of William Collings wife and the names of the parents of Harry F. Collings. With that information it was easier to find much more about the various families.

Wayne Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program in England, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy in several family history society journals. He has also served as an editor of two such publications. Wayne provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated

What can you find out from a will? – Part 3

The Elusive Charles Pearson …

In the last two posts I described the beneficiaries named in the will of my great-grandaunt, Emma Jane Wray. At the time of writing of those posts, I had been able to find all of them through various records and indexes except for one person – her nephew Charles Pearson. We could correctly surmise he was the son of one of Emma’s brothers.

Tied up with that problem was identifying Emma Jane’s brother, also named Charles Pearson. I know he was alive in 1896 because his name is on an account for his grandmother’s property which was settled after the death of his mother, Susannah, that year. I assumed he also lived in England.

My great-granduncle Charles (noted here as senior Charles, just to keep things straight) is shown on the 1871 England Census, aged 15, living with his parents and siblings and born in Australia. At the time he was a labourer in an ironworks. No birth record from Australia has been found for Charles but there seems little doubt from ship passenger records listing his family and the 1871 England census that he was born there.

I had found a series of records that offered a strong possibility for identifying the man but could not confirm he was my relative. There is a Charles Pearson, with various occupations, shown on several England censuses as being born in Australia. On every list his wife is named Annie. There is a possible marriage record for Charles Pearson and Annie Merry in 1877 in Leicester. I found all of the children that are shown on the censuses, Lily, Annie and Emma, with their mother's maiden name of Merry on the GRO index seemingly solidifying the relationships. As I have said before one can find the maiden names of mothers on the GRO index that do not appear on other databases such as FreeBMD, Ancestry or FindMyPast.

Details for Charles on the censuses are:

Year	Age	Residence	Occupation
1881	28	Leicester	Great Jetten spinning
1891	35	Coventry	Range Fitter
1901	47	Coventry	Heating Engineer
1911	54	Coventry	“Eninger” (Engineer?)

Annie's birth place is shown as Leicester on all censuses except for 1911 where it is listed as Scotland. In spite of the differences in Charles ages, I believe they are the same family. Childrens’ names and ages are consistent throughout. I think the reference to Scotland in 1911 is wrong but I have no explanation of why that place would have written when Charles signed the form. It is possible, of course, that Annie, nee Merry, died and Charles married another woman named Annie before 1911. But then the number of children shown on the record would not fit for a second wife.

In 1881 a Mary A. Pearson, mother (presumably of Charles, the head of the household) is shown living with the family. I believe this was actually Annie's mother. On the same census it appears her father, William Merry, was an inmate in a workhouse in Leicester, indicating the family had fallen on hard times. Until I can confirm who this Mary A. Pearson is, there will be a question. But some other data, while indirect, gives me confidence I have the right people.

In 1901 a nephew named Charles Pearson was living with Charles, Annie and their daughters. He was nine years old and his place of birth was Leamington, Warwickshire. I thought, “Aha, this may be Emma’s missing nephew, but he was not the son of her brother, Charles.”

I looked further to see if I could find him on other records. A Charles Pearson, aged 19 and born in Leamington, was living with Joseph and Emmie Taylor in London in 1911. Charles was indicated to be Emmie’s brother which meant her maiden name would have been Pearson. OK, maybe “Emmie” was, in fact Emma Pearson, and Charles was not her brother but her cousin, the same person who lived with her family in Coventry in 1901. Both Joseph and Emmie were born in Coventry according to the 1911 census. It was also recorded they had been married for three years. A marriage for the couple took place in 1908 in Coventry, so we had that regional connection established on a few records.

I looked for young Charles on FreeBMD and found a birth possibility in the March quarter of 1892 in Warwick. It had a note attached to it, though, that said it was a late entry with the birth actually recorded in the March quarter of 1895. That was curious but I felt I was on the right track and pursued some other lines. I went back to search the GRO Index and found the birth of Charles Pearson registered in the March quarter of 1895, just like FreeBMD said. This one gave me the mother’s maiden name – Atkinson.

I had an Atkinson in the Pearson family. Isabella Atkinson married James Pearson, one of Emma Jane’s brothers, in 1883. Through census and other records I had seven children born to this couple, including a Thomas Alfred Pearson born in 1892. Now I potentially had another son, born the same year. The 1911 census had recorded that Isabella had had eight children with seven still living at the time.

On FindMyPast I found two military records for Charles Pearson, one for service in the Royal Navy and one for the Royal Air Force. They were for the same man, though, as both gave his birth date as 15 January 1892, birth place as Leamington, occupation as automobile mechanic and a physical description of him that matched exactly on both records. The navy record indicated he had been transferred to the air force, probably due to his mechanical experience.

Now I have to say that I had already found another son of James and Isabella, Thomas Alfred Pearson, on the 1939 register and it showed his birth date as 15 January 1892. Wow! Could they have been twins? But why would one registration have been done so late? Was the original registration for Samuel messed up and no one caught it for a few years? I intend to purchase both records and see if I can determine what the problem was.

The air force record showed Charles had a wife, Cecily, who lived at 51 Aklam Road, North Kensington, London. I looked for marriage information for a Charles Pearson and a lady named Cecily and found one on FreeBMD for Cecily Hefferman. They were married in 1916 in Kensington. That fit the time and place as Charles had been living in London in 1911. To my delight, a copy of the actual marriage entry was on Ancestry and showed Charles’s father was James Pearson (deceased) a coach body builder. Indeed that is what Emma’s brother was on the 1891 census that I already had.

James Pearson died in 1897, leaving Isabella with eight children, the youngest possibly being the five-year old twins. Perhaps she felt overwhelmed and jumped at an offer from her brother-in-law, Charles to take the boy in. Through his uncle, young Charles may have developed his interest in automobiles that were just arriving on the scene.

The circle seemed to be closing, notwithstanding a few questionable entries on some censuses, such as young Charles shown as a brother to Emmie Taylor in 1911, or Mary A. Pearson shown as mother to the senior Charles in 1881. I believe I will be able to show these were mistakes when I have obtained other BMD records. I am now quite sure that the senior Charles Pearson I have found on censuses who was born in Australia is my great-granduncle.

One thing that still needs to be determined is who the eight children were that the 1911 census shows the couple had. I have the names of the three that were indicated as living then but not all of the five who had died. I did find three boys whose mother’s maiden name was Merry on the GRO index but who died as infants. One was born in Leicester and two in Coventry, and dovetail with the three girls named on the censuses.

In unravelling the relationships, I relied on databases from Ancestry, FindMyPast and FreeBMD. I used the search option for the General Register Office indexes to narrow down births and deaths. I compared BMD, census (including the 1939 Register), military, probate calendar and ships passenger records for many family members. The new research path all started this time with the information in Great-Grandaunt Emma Jane’s will.

There are still many certificates that I need to order but everything seems to be coming together, filling in holes on the family tree.

1909 note on postcard to Emma Jane Pearson from her nephew, James Henry (Jim) Pearson and brother to young Charles Pearson; Jim was killed in France in 1915 before Emma Jane's wedding which may be the event referenced in his message. 

The close relationships of the Pearson siblings and their children are demonstrated, first in Emma Jane’s will but also in how they seemed to come together when they needed each other’s support. It appears there are some very interesting and poignant stories behind the data I have assembled. Hopefully I will be able to learn about a few of them.

Wayne Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program in England, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy in several family history society journals. He has also served as an editor of two such publications. Wayne provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated