More questions regarding Rosa L Marshall's marriages.

I have been looking at the marriage certificates again, (obsessed I know!) and one thing that I noticed which doesn't make much sense to me are the addresses given for Rosa Lynda and Leonard James. We know that by the time they married in 1931 they already had two children, Leonard and Beryl. Beryl would have only been two months old. Yet they have stated that they are living at different addresses. Putting the addresses into Google Maps shows that they are about a 30min walk apart, so it isn't even as if they are just around the corner. I find it very strange indeed and another question which will continue to spin around my head with no way of ever finding an answer. I would hate to accuse my ancestors of anything dishonourable, but there is certainly something very strange about the whole affair.

The mystery of Miss Marshall marches on.

I hit the jackpot last night, after hours of scrolling through marriage records on The Medway Ancestors website (brilliant, by the way) I have found the marriage of Rosa Lynda Marshall to a Mr Frederick Gore. So the stories have turned out to be true. Rosa was married to somebody else before she married Leonard James Edge. Below is record of her first marriage:

I know that she has her first child with Leonard Edge in January 1930 so she would have been with him since at least 1929. So what happened to her marriage to Frederick in those 5 years? On her marriage certificate to Leonard, she describes herself as a "spinster" not "widow" or "divorcee". Would this have meant that her marriage to Frederick was annulled? There is no record of a divorce for the pair of them, and I have a record for his death in 1956. The rumour was that her marriage to Frederick was never even consumated. Could this be grounds for an anullment? I can't see that I am going to be able to find out the reasons for this marriage breakdown, but at least I have some solid evidence for what actually happened now. The above marriage certifcate also shows that Frederick was in the Royal Navy. Maybe long stints at sea caused their marriage to fail, (although surely she should have know this before she married him?) Maybe she was unfaithful to Frederick with Leonard. Her marriage to Leonard states him as a Barman, and I know that she used to sing in all the pubs and the clubs in Medway. I am fairly certain that this is how they met.

Their marriage in 1931 came after they had already had two children; Leonard in Jan 1930 and Beryl in Sept 1931 and was performed in a register office "by licence". I suppose that they would have been unable to get married in a church as she had been married before. However in order to obtain a licence for their marriage, she would have had to have a ligitimate reason for her previous marriage breakdown. I cannot see her being able to lie and commit bigamy without being found out. They all lived in the same area of Medway, the community would have known all the goings on.

I guess the next step is to try and find out a little bit more of Frederick Gore's life during the 1920s, being in the Royal Navy means that there are hopefully some military records for him which I can seek out. Hopefully I can unravel this saga a little further.

So they were married after all!

The long awaited marriage certifcate arrived in the post the other day which confirmed that my Grandad's parents Leonard James Edge and Rosa Lynda Marshall DID get married. As for solving the mystery of their marriage, receiving the certifcate has just caused further questions to be asked. The certifcate shows that they were married in a Register Office "by licence". Was this because she had been married before? I have found a record of a marriage in Medway between a Rose L Marshall and a Frederick Gore in 1924. I have searched through the parish records to see if I can find the entry but it hasn't yielded any results. It looks as if I might have to send away for the certifcate again to see if it is indeed my Rosa. Obviously there is the difference in first name Rose/Rosa which leaves a question mark above the marriage, only actually having the certifcate will answer that question. But then what if it is my Rosa? There will be even more questions to answer about her first marriage and what happened the gentleman in question.

Miss Marshall does not make the journey easy, but she certainly makes it an interesting!

Tall tales from Miss Marshall!

I've been talking to my Nan today about my Grandad's family. One of the main reasons I embarked on this mission with nan was because my Grandad always claimed that his mother was born in Ireland. This is what he had been told growing up and accounted for the fact that his middle name was Patrick. Grandad took to this and loved to tell people of his Irish roots. My nan and I wanted to find out all of the details regarding her life and how she came to be living in Chatham, Kent. The search for Rosa Lynda (Grandad's Mother) was not an easy one. We didn't know when she had been born or who her parents were, only that she had been born in County Cork. The maps came out and the search began, looking at different towns and villages in the county to see if any of the names jogged my Grandad's memory. No such luck. Finding a record of my Grandad's birth gave us a maiden name of Marshall, which Grandad agreed with. The only problem was that Rosa Lynda Marshall was born in Sheerness, Kent and NOT County Cork, Ireland. Sheerness sounded viable as it is only roughly 15 miles down the road. Grandad however was not impressed that his roots were not so Irish. Maybe, he thought, it was her mum or dad that gave rise to the story. The search would continue.

Today I was checking over facts regarding my Grandad's family; I successfully located them on the 1911 census, which places her in Sheerness once again. Apart from her birth and death record, the 1911 census is the only evidence I had found of her life. Remembering a story my Grandad had told me about his parents not being married, I questioned my nan to see if this rang true with her. It did. Of course years of research has taught me to take everything with a pinch of salt, especially with Rosa Lynda after the Irish Debacle. Lo and Behold after a quick search of marriages between Marshall and Edge in Kent and a certificate turns up. A phone call to my Great Auntie (Grandad's sister) confirms she had always thought they had never been married either. Apparently she had actually been married before, but the marriage never consummated. This is my next step, to see if I can find record of her previous marriage. Not that I know anything at all about the gentlemen in question or what happened to him. 

It seems that Rosa Lynda liked to tell a tale or two!