Joseph Connolly & Elizabeth Golding
 

I am researching Thomas Connolly who married my aunt Edith Mary Sharratt in 1931. On the 1911 census he was living at 55 Hilton Street, Birkenhead, Cheshire with his parents Joseph & Elizabeth and seven siblings.
RG14 PN21973 RD452 SD1 ED16 SN344
https://search.findmypast.co.uk/reco...973%2F0687%2F1

I have the births and baptisms for all the children and these indicate the mother's maiden name as Golding. The census also states that Joseph & Elizabeth had been married for 29 years (1882 approx).

I have searched FMP for their marriage in Britain, Ireland & World using name and date variants but cannot find a marriage between Joseph Connolly & Elizabeth Golding. Joseph gives his birthplace as Birkenhead (1861 approx) and Elizabeth as Liverpool (1863 approx) on the 1911 census.

Do you think it may be that Elizabeth was previously married to a Golding and gave that name as her maiden name?

That wouldn't be my first guess. Also, I would try looking on FreeBMD for the marriage as well as FMP. Though I don't see it on there either.

There is an Elizabeth Golding birth registered Apr-Jun 1862 Liverpool which could be her.

I found a likely Joseph Connolly on the 1881 census as a lodger in Birkenhead, unmarried, age 20, with Mary A Connolly age 53 who I guess is his mother. I also found Elizabeth Golding age 19, unmarried, born Liverpool, a housemaid at Oxton, Cheshire (in the borough of Birkenhead, so not far from Joseph.)

Yes, I also had found those and the two addresses are indeed very close, so I assumed that was where they met. Both were single in 1881 which ties in with their marriage being in 1882.
Just baffling me why I can't find their marriage!

I looked too and couldn't find anything.

Perhaps Golding was the maiden name, but she had been married before.

Yes, I thought of that but according to the 1911 census she had been married to Joseph since 1882 which would have made her 20/21 years old, so I doubt that she would have been married before. Also on the 1881 census she is single.

Her first couple of children were baptised in Catholic churches (the rest, strangely, in Anglican?) so maybe it was a Catholic marriage and the records aren't available online yet?

If it was a Catholic marriage, it should still be in the civil registration marriage indexes.

I remember something I read, may be relevant. If he was Catholic and she was Protestant, the catholic church wouldn't marry them unless she converted. So the first couple of children baptised RC in the hope the parents would marry, then the priest put his foot down and refused to baptise the rest. However, priests normally made a point of writing illegitimate in the register, so maybe not in this case.

OC

It has been known for church records not to make it to the GRO and sometimes (less often) even to the local reg office! There's information about this in the book 'A Comedy of Errors or The Marriage Records of England and Wales 1837-1899' by Michael Whitfield Foster (or it might be in the sequel, I don't remember). Or, of course, they might just have not married for various possible reasons, the most likely being that one of them had already been married. However, there is no indication of a marriage for either of them in the right area (I looked 1875-1885). They might still appear as single in 1881 if the marriage had failed before that date.

EDIT that book is fairly out of date now in some ways, but would probably still be interesting to people who want to know how the registration system used to work.