When A Marriage Certificate Contradicts It Own Self

      

     I've spent some time lately researching those less popular subjects in my tree, the ones who never married or had children, so their line comes to an end with not a lot to trace.  You never know though, and that is why I'm sitting here -- that and the sub-freezing temps outside.  This morning I've been looking at my great-great-aunt Lida C. Powers who I had only bare bones information about.  I think I wanted to learn more about her because it annoys me to no end how other family trees insist on using the name Lydia, found in exactly one single census, instead of her correct name of Lida, as recorded in the other censuses.  I know Lida was her name because she was the sister of my grandfather's mother and he spoke of her often.  I even met the lady once myself; only once because she was elderly by then and resided near New York City while I rusticated upstate in the boondocks near Rochester.

     I knew Lida had married later than most, as many Irish ladies did, that she was a nurse and instructor, and her husband, Uncle Leland, was a well to do funeral director.  Getting started, I pulled up Ancestry and commenced a search for her.  One item that came up was a marriage certificate from New Brunswick, Canada.  That could fit, I knew Leland was born in Canada though he wasn't currently living there.  Of course, Ancestry wouldn't allow me look at the certificate when I tried since I don't have a world subscription, so I set about finding another way to view it, which I usually can with a little searching.  Family Search looked promising, but these particular records hadn't been indexed and while I was plodding through them the images stopped loading.  I found another site, The Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, and tried that one successfully!  It also had free images.

     I easily found the certificate which gave the correct birthplace and parent's names for Lida, so I was confident it was her.  The problem was with the certificate itself.  

     It clearly says the marriage took place the 27th of September in 1928, but look closely down in the right hand corner, it apears to say it was registered the 29th of September in 1938, or does it?

     It certainly looks like it says 1938, but what's the deal with that weird little tail on the 3?  I decided the anwer could be found in the 1930 census, and there was Aunt Lida, living at the nursing college where she was the principal, listed as single.  Her future husband was in the same town, living and working as a supervisor at an "insane hospital", he was listed as widowed.  It looked as though they couldn't have married in 1928, and the 1938 date was the right one.  But then I looked at her age on the certificate and it was what it would have been in 1928, not ten years later.  Now I was really confused.  Checking the 1940 census, I saw that Lida and Leland were living in Kings County, New York and said they had been living at the same place in 1935, so they must have been married BEFORE 1938. This called for some serious thought.

     Try as I may, I could not reconcile the facts as given.  I recalled reading that there was a time when female teachers were required to remain single or lose their jobs, but was that still the case in the late 1920's?  From what I could find on the internet, it was.  By 1930 Lida was more than a teacher, she had moved into a principal's position.  Could it be she wasn't ready to end her career and kept her marriage secret for a time?  That would certainly explain why she chose to marry in Canada rather than New York where she had sisters and a father still living.  I did one last search at Ancestry, this one for Leland and I found my answer, at least a partial one in a Massachusetts passenger list--

Leland Macdonald
Departure Place	Yarmouth, Nova Scotia
Arrival Date	27 Sep 1936
Arrival Place	Boston, Massachusetts, USA

     Not just Leland was among the passengers, Lida C. MacDonald was with him on that trip.  In 1936.  I'm not sure I'll ever know with certainty what motivated Lida and Leland to hide their union for at least two years, but I'm ready to add the marriage to my tree, in 1928.