Remarrying after immigration?
January 17, 2016 5:05 PM Subscribe
Was it typical/usual/done at all for immigrants to the US (20th century, pre-WWI) to marry in the United States even if they had previously married in their country of origin?
My uncle has gotten me hunting for the marriage record of my great-grandparents. We were operating under the assumption/belief that they'd married in then-Hungary/now-Austria sometime before moving to the United States in 1913, reinforced by the fact they show up in a ship manifest as married and sharing a surname. Then we discovered a marriage record in right place in Ilinois in 1914. (Their names are right, as are the parents' names. We're talking about people with uncommon surnames. It's highly improbable this isn't them.)
This seems to leave two possibilities:
- They weren't married in 1913 and lied to the INS. However, one assumes they had passports.
- They were married in Hungary, but it was expedient to remarry in the US.
The latter seems more probable, and I know that some states (currently, who knows about 1914) allow you to marry someone you're already married to. It just seems odd that your maiden name would then show up on the marriage certificate, given that whatever papers she had would have had a different name.
My uncle has gotten me hunting for the marriage record of my great-grandparents. We were operating under the assumption/belief that they'd married in then-Hungary/now-Austria sometime before moving to the United States in 1913, reinforced by the fact they show up in a ship manifest as married and sharing a surname. Then we discovered a marriage record in right place in Ilinois in 1914. (Their names are right, as are the parents' names. We're talking about people with uncommon surnames. It's highly improbable this isn't them.)
This seems to leave two possibilities:
- They weren't married in 1913 and lied to the INS. However, one assumes they had passports.
- They were married in Hungary, but it was expedient to remarry in the US.
The latter seems more probable, and I know that some states (currently, who knows about 1914) allow you to marry someone you're already married to. It just seems odd that your maiden name would then show up on the marriage certificate, given that whatever papers she had would have had a different name.
In some cases there were barriers to the marriage (parental, social, legal) that led to people to "holding themselves out" as married without the ceremony and/or paperwork. In some times and places, there have been entire social groups or ethnicities that had no way of getting married officially, and it was much harder if for instance the two parties were of different religious backgrounds.
There's a decent chance that everyone they knew back home considered them married, anyway, but that they couldn't prove it. There are some countries today where you basically can't get a divorce even if you've been abandoned by the other person; in those places you often run into couples who've been "married" for decades but one or the other is legally married to someone no one's seen since the 70s.
posted by SMPA at 5:34 PM on January 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
There's a decent chance that everyone they knew back home considered them married, anyway, but that they couldn't prove it. There are some countries today where you basically can't get a divorce even if you've been abandoned by the other person; in those places you often run into couples who've been "married" for decades but one or the other is legally married to someone no one's seen since the 70s.
posted by SMPA at 5:34 PM on January 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
Religious ceremony in Hungary, civil ceremony in US? Or, Hungarian 'proof of marriage' paperwork lost or inaccessible once they were here, so another marriage was recorded in Illinois.
posted by Iris Gambol at 6:00 PM on January 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Iris Gambol at 6:00 PM on January 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
It is likely that they were married by whatever constituted their local standards before they left - whether that means an announcement in church or an actual civil record filed and lost - and you do whatever you need to do to make your life simpler when you're an immigrant in a country often hostile to immigrants. Where landlords, for example, won't rent to you because you can't prove you're married, or your children will be considered illegitimate. I'm sure there are immigrants who got married repeatedly, if that's what it took to jump through the hoops. It's not like you'll burst into flames if you get married when you're already married.
posted by Lyn Never at 6:08 PM on January 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by Lyn Never at 6:08 PM on January 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
My maternal grandmother's grandmother was married in Austria and also has a NYC marriage license: the former was her ketubah in german (altho maybe yiddish, idk) and hebrew, and the latter was the civil registration for US records. I'm assuming a foreign document in non-english languages wasn't enough for some bureaucrat somwhere. This was in the 1860s, though.
posted by poffin boffin at 6:28 PM on January 17, 2016
posted by poffin boffin at 6:28 PM on January 17, 2016
I'm not an expert in Hungarian history, but did something happen in 1913-1914 Hungary (maybe franz Ferdinand's assassination?) that would cause their Hungarian documents to not be valid/accepted in the US? I have family that had their citizenship changed between like 4 different countries in the 1880-1950 timespan and it affected their documents in some cases.
posted by melissasaurus at 6:39 PM on January 17, 2016
posted by melissasaurus at 6:39 PM on January 17, 2016
As someone who has ancestors in similar locations (hello, our great- or great-great-grandparents probably knew each other in Chicago, and I make excellent kolachi/beigli! Are we related? :D )
and as someone who has spent a decade doing a lot of genealogical research....
There weren't passports or identification documents then like we have now. It would have been totally accepted and duly recorded if a man boarded a ship with a woman and said "This is my wife." Or possibly they didn't speak the necessary language and the person taking the information just inferred the relationship. It really didn't matter much then.
Was she perhaps pregnant at the time and they just thought it'd be easier to say they were married? Were they running away from anything (family, politics, poverty) and escaping to America and thought it'd be simpler to present as a married couple? Were they just trying to prevent being separated into unmarried male / unmarried female quarters on the ship? Had they lost or not been able to bring the marriage documents and found it easier to just remarry legally in America? Did they change churches and want to be married in the new church?
Also, if your ancestor was in Chicago and Hungarian at that time, there's a Hungarian Womens' Society in Chicago that I'm almost certain she would have been part of. They sent flowers when my grandmother passed (we didn't even know she'd been a member). They keep excellent records.
posted by erst at 7:04 PM on January 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
and as someone who has spent a decade doing a lot of genealogical research....
There weren't passports or identification documents then like we have now. It would have been totally accepted and duly recorded if a man boarded a ship with a woman and said "This is my wife." Or possibly they didn't speak the necessary language and the person taking the information just inferred the relationship. It really didn't matter much then.
Was she perhaps pregnant at the time and they just thought it'd be easier to say they were married? Were they running away from anything (family, politics, poverty) and escaping to America and thought it'd be simpler to present as a married couple? Were they just trying to prevent being separated into unmarried male / unmarried female quarters on the ship? Had they lost or not been able to bring the marriage documents and found it easier to just remarry legally in America? Did they change churches and want to be married in the new church?
Also, if your ancestor was in Chicago and Hungarian at that time, there's a Hungarian Womens' Society in Chicago that I'm almost certain she would have been part of. They sent flowers when my grandmother passed (we didn't even know she'd been a member). They keep excellent records.
posted by erst at 7:04 PM on January 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
I don't know about Hungary, but not every country has the woman change her name when she marries. To speak of the example I know, French women legally keep their birth last name all life long, even if they may use their husband's name in day-to-day life.
So you can't assume they were using the same name on their papers even if they were married.
posted by snakeling at 12:56 AM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
So you can't assume they were using the same name on their papers even if they were married.
posted by snakeling at 12:56 AM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
My parents have 2 wedding anniversaries, they were married in Germany, then soon moved to Canada around 1968, and had to get married again here for it to be considered legal. so it does happen! (apparently, they never remember either anniversary)
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 1:43 AM on January 18, 2016
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 1:43 AM on January 18, 2016
Apparently it was normal to have two separate weddings, the civil and the religious. My own paternal grandparents had their civil marriage, then almost two years later (and pregnant with their second kid) they had a religious ceremony.
Were your relatives different religions? One each Catholic and Lutheran, or Jewish and Catholic, for instance? Apparently that led to a lot of the extended delays for religious ceremonies, say if one partner had to convert and get a preacher's approval for their church wedding. The civil marriage was, however, the legally 'real' marriage.
posted by easily confused at 1:47 AM on January 18, 2016
Were your relatives different religions? One each Catholic and Lutheran, or Jewish and Catholic, for instance? Apparently that led to a lot of the extended delays for religious ceremonies, say if one partner had to convert and get a preacher's approval for their church wedding. The civil marriage was, however, the legally 'real' marriage.
posted by easily confused at 1:47 AM on January 18, 2016
Possibly saying they were married for immigration purposes? My great-grandmother immigrated from China to Brazil under her maiden name because she held Portuguese citizenship through her father. Her husband and daughter were stateless Russians and entered Brazil together as such. If she'd used her (Russian) married surname, she wouldn't have been let in so easily, and once she was in she could sponsor the rest of the family.
So it's possible they SAID they were married because immigration authorities would look more favorably on them. Then, whoops, no documentation, which was probably very common at the time. Then when they settled down in the US they needed actual documentation of their relationship, so they got married here.
posted by chainsofreedom at 6:50 AM on January 18, 2016
So it's possible they SAID they were married because immigration authorities would look more favorably on them. Then, whoops, no documentation, which was probably very common at the time. Then when they settled down in the US they needed actual documentation of their relationship, so they got married here.
posted by chainsofreedom at 6:50 AM on January 18, 2016
>whatever papers she had would have had a different name.
I have a copy of my great-grandmother's Italian passport from 1918. Everything is hand-written, and information was updated by crossing out the old thing and writing in the new with no official stamp/signature so far as I can see (this passport appears to have covered my grandfather, who was born after the date on the passport but who joined the family for the yearlong trip back home). Whatever papers they had might have been surprisingly informal affairs.
posted by tchemgrrl at 7:32 AM on January 18, 2016
I have a copy of my great-grandmother's Italian passport from 1918. Everything is hand-written, and information was updated by crossing out the old thing and writing in the new with no official stamp/signature so far as I can see (this passport appears to have covered my grandfather, who was born after the date on the passport but who joined the family for the yearlong trip back home). Whatever papers they had might have been surprisingly informal affairs.
posted by tchemgrrl at 7:32 AM on January 18, 2016
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