Know about the Romantic Lives of ancestors with the help obituaries
 

Marriage and divorce: How they help in examining your family tree better.

When you embark on a journey to trace back your family and know more about your ancestors, it ‎can be a long and revealing journey. While it is very interesting, thorough and comprehensive ‎research is needed which is almost always painfully slow.‎

Most people, when tracing out their ancestral history, use obituaries as a starting point. These ‎concise pieces in print are real storehouses of information. An expert in the field can figure out a ‎lot of things by simply analyzing the obituaries of your ancestors, including information about ‎their love life as well!‎

The thing to spot in obituaries is the presence of marriages and separations that may not have ‎been taken into account. When something like this is discovered, it may shed light on hitherto ‎unknown family members. For example, children from a previous divorce may not have hitherto ‎been considered as part of the family. Once they are discovered, their children and grandchildren ‎also become part of the mixture and slowly but surely the family tree widens considerably.‎

The way in which an obituary is written matters greatly when you try and decipher the clues ‎contained in it. A relatively detailed obituary can be a huge treasure chest of information. ‎However, in most cases, in order to know your ancestor’s love life closer, you will need to read ‎the obituaries carefully and understand the impact of certain statements properly. There are ‎certain things that you can lookout for to discover whether there were divorces and ‎undocumented marriages, some of them being:‎

Sometimes, direct references are made in the obituaries itself, such as designating someone as ‎‎“former wife and long time companion of the deceased”. Such statements are direct clues to ‎branches of a family.‎

Sometimes, the list of children in a family provides important pointers as to a person’s love life. ‎Long lists with multiple surname patterns can point towards multiple marriages and give a ‎genealogist useful insight into the ancestor’s love life.‎

In some cases, former family members from an earlier marriage may be mentioned. Though it is ‎very rare to find such mentions, it is nevertheless not unheard of.‎

Once you find definite clues as to a hitherto forgotten or unknown marriage of your ancestor, ‎you must realize that getting actual documented proof in the form of marriage certificates or the ‎like will not be easy. Try to proceed in steps, which may include:‎

Looking for definite clues and judging the time and location of marriage as closely as possible ‎from them. Sometimes, old marriage records can be miraculously found in print. In fact, in case ‎of a divorce or separation, such records may also be found while sifting through old newspapers
Once you have discovered the location of the event, getting in touch with the competent ‎authorities will be necessary in order to successfully obtain documented proof of your ancestor’s ‎love life.‎

A person’s love life can offer valuable insights into the family tree. While it sheds more light on ‎the life of a person now deceased, it also opens up new avenues in which the family may have ‎proceeded and can help you figure out new branches in your family tree.‎