About birth registrations and maiden names?

Hi,

On a recent search that I did, also in Cork, this situation happened. Using your example, when Ellen Holland married her second husband, her name on their civil marriage record was O'Leary & Holland, but when Ellen gave birth to a child of O'Leary, her maiden name of Barry was on the civil birth record. Essentially, said child was no relation to Phillip Holland. I cannot say with 100% certainty this was the custom everywhere, but it is one example I found.

Regards,

Hello Carolyn

Thanks for taking the time. Much appreciated. If I understand you correctly - the woman's maiden name of Barry would be used on the registration for the birth of subsequent children by her and O'Leary - but her previous marriage name (Holland) was used to register the marriage between her and O'Leary? Do I have that right?

Kind Regards

Mike.

Mike,

Yes, that is correct. Another thing to note if you are ever looking at baptism sponsor's surnames in trying to piece together the siblings, if a woman was married and was asked to be a baptism sponsor, they used her maiden name in the record and not her married name. In your example, if you saw an O'Leary child with sponsors also named O'Leary, for example Michael O'Leary & Catherine O'Leary, they were probably siblings of the father O'Leary...Michael and Catherine were not married to each other. They could also be another relation besides siblings, of course, but I just wanted to point out the use of a maiden name for a married sponsor.

Regards,