Saturday 28 April 2018

Heirloom Hand-over

A while back I alluded to the fact I'd received a mysterious comment on Ancestry. Someone had commented on the image of my great-grandparent's marriage certificate that they had the original. That line of my family is very small, so I was pretty surprised to say the least. After quite a few delays, I met up with the lovely woman who commented and she handed me over two items she found while cleaning out her shed. It turns out her husband's grandfather married my great-grandmother, which goes to show that you never know who will still have items of interest to your family!

1) A picture of my great-aunt Annie



This is quite unusual. It's made almost like a badge is, with the back pressed into the picture. It's a photo I already had, but it's very special to own the one which actually belonged to my great-grandmother and was probably on display in her house.

2) The marriage certificate

Obviously I had applied quite some time ago to get a copy of this, and so had all the relevant information already. You'll see it points out things like the occupation of the participants' fathers, their current residence, age at marriage etc.


One of the things this shows is that Margaret said she was 21, the legal age to marry without her parents' consent. A year later when Annie was born she was recorded as being 19. On the original you may notice a teeny tiny difference...




You can actually see where someone (lookin' at YOU here, Margaret) has changed the year so that it shows how old she really was. And this people, is why you want to get original certificates where-ever possible.

A slightly old meme, I know, but I couldn't resist...











2 comments:

  1. I inherited a framed picture like that - brass backing wrapped around the picture and plastic. I probably shouldn't have, but I took it apart. I was just so irritated that I could see that the photograph was wrinkled inside the frame. The good news is that the photo wasn't damaged by my dismantling the frame, AND there was a name and a date on the back. I'm still trying to find out which Miss Jones it is, but its narrowed down to just two.

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  2. Oh wow! Well, I know who this is and roughly when, so I'm not going to try pulling it apart, but it's very interesting to know that it can be pulled apart without ruining the photo.

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