Marriages 1827-1839

The volume, Marriages Years 1827-1839, will present a family history researcher with a migraine.  From the very first item right up to October 1831, the records do not include the names of the parents of both bride and groom.

You are tracing your family in the pre-Claveria period, and you’ve memorized as many sets of first names in your ancestry and are on the alert for them. But even then you still cannot be too sure if there’s another couple with the same set of first names.  Thus, the parents’ names would certainly have made a big difference for additional cross-reference. So omitting them also takes away one less tool for you.

I don’t know why this was so, how the church clerks disengaged parents from their marrying children when, in all probability, at their ages, these offspring would have been still living with their parents.

And yet, the names of the respective cabezas de barangay are there. Maybe, the clerks presumed the identity of the cabeza would already identify which families these were—at that time—but we don’t know that for sure.

Parents began to be identified only from 31-Oct-1831 with the record of Francisco Domingo, widower of Ma. Seraphina, 26 years of age, marrying Ma. Candida, daughter of Francisco Serafin and Ma. Silveria, both deceased, Barangay of D. Francisco Laurencio. Testigos Francisco Santiago and Ma. Antonina.

Notice: [1) inconsistently the names are spelled Seraphina but Serafin; 2) parents of widower grooms and widow brides were not named, but their deceased spouses were.

A migraine recurs June 1832, when the record title names only the groom. This laziness went on until mid-November of the same year after which the brides once again made it to the credits.