Census says married but I doubt it

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: The root cause of this request for advice is someone I originally called "Infamous Annie" but who I now have a distinct regard for.

The immediate cause for concern is the 1900 Census of John and Annie Brode (sic - it's really Brodie) in San Francisco. See https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/619...

This census describes John (G95B-CZZ) and Annie (possibly not yet in FSFT) as man and wife, married for 6 years. Frankly, I doubt that they were married:
(1) There's unlikely to be proof because this is pre-1906 San Francisco
(2) Annie is in something like 4 consecutive censuses with a different husband in each. (I may have exaggerated by 1 census).

1. In 1900 John Brodie and Annie are living in SF, claiming to the enumerator to be man and wife. There are, in that house, 3 of John's children with his first wife (Agnes who died 1891), and 2 of Annie's children - alleged to be step-children.

2 That 1900 census is attached to John Brodie and the 3 children of his first wife. There are unfinished attachments on that 1900 census referring to Annie and her children.

3. If I look at the Source Linker representation of the 1900 census, the unattached line for Annie is suggested as a match with John's first wife Agnes Low Bruce. Anyone with some Scots experience will know that Annie and Agnes are basically the same name - so that's a hostage to fortune.

So - Q1 - how do I stop someone coming along, looking at the unattached 1900 Annie, seeing it's suggested as a match for Agnes, and attaching the 1900 Annie to Agnes?

One possible answer to that Q1 would be - create Annie and her 2 children and attach the 1900 Annie to her. But my worry then would be that I have the 1900 attached to them all, which says on the original that John and Annie have been married for 6y - when, as indicated above, I really, really suspect that they aren't.

Q2 If I were to create Annie and her 2 children and attach the 1900 census to them, how can I stop people believing the 1900 census and creating a 6y old marriage between Annie and John? (This is why I personally believe we need a positive indication of "Not Married" or "Almost Certainly Not Married")

Grateful for any suggestions how I can record all this robustly.

(As an aside - I said that I now have a distinct regard for "Infamous Annie" - it looks like she and her 2 children were abandoned in Manchester, England, and she decided to go out to San Francisco where her brother lived. Instead of going the obvious route via New York, she went, with two children of 6y and 7y in tow, via Quebec, then presumably train to near the US border where I believe they had to walk across to reach the next station before she could carry on to SF. And I think that she may have done all that, because this was just before the US authorities started clamping down on immigrants - as a single mother she had no visible means of support so chose a route that was physically harder but with less checks. Hard work on her part.).

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: I might add that even though the "marriage" relationship as "documented" in the census may not be correct, the fact that it is even referenced would indicate that a "couple relationship" of some type probably *DID* exist for some period of time. For that reason, I would still show them as a "couple" and then add the "couple relationship" information to that relationship as it becomes available. You can even add that census as a source for that couple relationship.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: Tom - thanks for your considered reply. I find it ironic that I, the non-LDS member, am more worried about the implications of a possibly erroneous marriage relationship being entered than you are! So on that basis I think I'll record a marriage for John and Annie in "About 1894" with notes or something saying, "Not necessarily true but everything got burnt in 1906..." (The last statement is not, of course, quite true, but is a good excuse!).

One interesting thing - I don't remember thinking about John correcting his "Years married" from 20 to 6 - but yes, his first marriage lasted about 15y, so it looks like he originally meant that 20 to mean "Total years married".

I omitted a raft of detail about Annie - the three (Annie, Beatrice and Bertie) can be found on a passenger list from Liverpool to Quebec in late 1893. The family is in the Manchester area in the 1891 UK census when they are almost as much of a mystery as later - theoretically they are living with a 32y old chap named William Clayton and all have the surname Clayton. I find this very suspicious since William Clayton is the name of Annie's (much older) father. Coincidence? A made up name for a real person? Possibily even a made-up person to keep the inquisitive away?

I also have Annie's real, genuine marriage to a Mr Albert Reed (1883 in Lancashire) - she also married a Mr Charles Wyse in San Francisco, and while that was in 1905, the index entry survives - in that index she's called Reed, not Brodie, perhaps suggesting Annie never married John Brodie. Although since John Brodie was still alive in 1905, she might have deliberately obscured her past if they were still married!!

Hmmm - there's plenty of stuff about Annie in Ancestry trees - I need to think about what I need to put into FSFT in order to inhibit any unwarranted assumptions.

Thanks again for the advice Tom.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: The only reason I started to enter this tangle into FSFT was that I discovered a birth return for John and Agnes' youngest daughter in a collection of California County birth returns - it looks like that is a FamilySearch originated collection so it was sort of thanks that I started this.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: A sensible viewpoint, Jeff.