Married or not

[julie d]

Hi I posted a long time ago about not being able to find a marriage between James Donaldson and Janet Marshall. I have recently been looking on SP at the birth of their son Robert Donaldson 1806, it says James and spouse Janet Marshall. Would it say spouse if they were not married.
Julie

[Currie]

Hello Julie,

One of your previous posts with more detail of the family.
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3717&hilit=janet+marshall

According to the FamilySearch Wiki page for Bathgate parish there are records of only eight marriages between 1785 and 1811. That’s an average of about one marriage every three years.
https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Ba ... _Genealogy

The 1791 Statistical Account of the parish of Bathgate gives us some interesting figures.
https://stataccscot.edina.ac.uk/static/ ... account_1/

The total population was 2309, comprising 984 males and 1325 females.
About 1989 were Established Church, about 320 were Seceders, and 3 Episcopal.
There were a total of 449 married couples living in the parish.
There were about 21 marriages every year.

At 21 marriages a year that would be at least 500 marriages over the 26 years of the 1785 to 1811 period for which there are surviving records only for 8. That’s probably why you can’t find any record of yours.

Would they have dared not to have been married in a society in which everyone was packaged so neatly into religious groups. Not likely.

All the best,
Alan

[julie d]

Thanks Alan, that's a lot of information from you. I will check the links out.
Julie