Maiden name of bride when her surname matches her father's surname

LegacyUser

Susan D'Andrea said: I am indexing Wisconsin marriage records. One field says "name of bride previous to marriage." Directions say not to use this surname for the bride's maiden name since she might have been married previously. If the surname of her father matches this surname, then I think that would be her maiden name. Please consider this. Finding a bride's maiden name is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to doing family history.

LegacyUser

Kathryn Grant said: Agreed. There's another problem I wish would be fixed in some indexing project instructions and that's when indexers are instructed to use the mother's married surname as her surname when her maiden name is not available. This causes ongoing confusing with incorrect duplicates and bad merges.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: I have run into a number of persons where the wife married more than once. In some instances (not all of them for the same person), the wife used her married name prior to the marriage of a later spouse. This type of thing is inconsistent with respect to my relatives who married more than once.

Even the marriage record for the subsequent spouse had her previous marriage surname, but not her surname.

Indexes should not have inferred information added to them, but reflect what is only in the original record, whether the marriage for a woman had her father's surname, her previous married surname, or whatever.

As mentioned in another discussion, FamilySearch treats indexes as sources, rather than indexes, which point to the source. That's a problem with the way they set up their citations, but because of the FamilySearch practice, many users treat the indexes as if they are sources.

Which really suggests that an index should not contain implied information, such as a wife's maiden name being the surname of her father, if her maiden name is not specified.