Oooh, reincarnation??

[Merry]

Nothing to add to BK6 from this thread

I've just spent ages looking for the death of George Edward Hamblet because his wife of four years stated "husband recently deceased" as her occupation having changed her marital status from wife to widow on the 1861 census:

http://search.ancestry.co.uk/iexec?h...=&pid=26158646

Eventually I gave up, only to find he was 1) alive at the time, but listed as single and 2) back with his wife on the following census!!

http://search.ancestry.co.uk/iexec?h...=&pid=10070171

Isn't it a wonder we ever get our family histories sorted out?! lol

[Olde Crone]

Far better to be a dignified widow than an undignified abandoned wife!

(And so, why do we go on and on and on obediently believing what they said on the census, lol and being surprised when it turns out to be a lie.)

OC

[Kit]

Mine were undignified abandoned wives. Quite stubborn about it really.

One woman was married for about 40 years, even after her husband had grandchildren by the other woman. He even married his woman about 25 years after abandoning his wife but the (first) wife still insisted on being married on the census'.

[Uncle John]

One "widow" in my tree in 1891 died in 1892, without the knowledge that her errant husband died 2 years later from TB. The children of the marriage emigrated to Canada and those of the "union" to New Zealand, presumably never knowing of each others' existence.