births

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frankcsr
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births

Post by frankcsr »

I have noticed that there are quite a few instances where a child is born to couples that are living together and at a later date they are married. Was this common it the 1800's? does it have anything to do with the laws regarding the church vs civil law?
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Italysearcher
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Re: births

Post by Italysearcher »

The couple probably were married in the church and did the civil marriage later to legitimise their children. There are articles on my blog covering this subject.
Ann Tatangelo
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Dual citizenship assistance, and document acquisition, on-site genealogical research in Lazio, Molise, Latina and Cosenza. Land record searches and succession.
frankcsr
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Re: births

Post by frankcsr »

thanks, which articles
erudita74
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Re: births

Post by erudita74 »

Frank
I was putting the following together, when Ann posted her reply

Couples in the 1800s did not cohabitat without marriage. They would have been living together, only if they had married in a church. After the unification of Italy (the process took several years to complete -1865-1871), then civil marriage became the rule, but many couples resisted having a civil ceremony, and the civil state did then not recognize their previous church marriages. So any children who had been to a couple after they married in a church, but before they had a civil ceremony, were considered by the civil state to be illegitimate. Only a civil marriage then legitimized these children, in the eyes of the civil law

Cohabitation-or at least documentation concerning it-is a more recent phenomenon (from about the middle of the 20th century) in both Europe and Italy-

https://www.demogr.mpg.de/publications/ ... 20Text.pdf


duplicate post-

https://www.italiangenealogy.com/forum/ ... ture/40573
Anizio
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Re: births

Post by Anizio »

Exactly what erudita74 said.

I have had so many people telling me stories about how their ancestors were born out of wedlock and I had to correct them. So many of my grandparents' parents and grandparents around that time were born to parents married in a church and only married civilly years, sometimes a decade later.

It requires you to sometimes be creative because there is not pattern for what name will be on the birth certificate. I have seen the mothers name used, the fathers name, and I have even seen times when a new name was used (remember if there was no valid civil marriage only one parent would be on the birth certificate and the other part would be listed as unknown...even if they were not literally unknown). ie. children given the name Nallini when the mother registered their births, and the fathers surname was Nalli.

Then again....sometimes the children were truly born out of wedlock. My grandfather's grandfather and 3 other children were born to two people who had an premarital affair in the 1860s and 1870s in Rome. There were a lot of complications and court battles, but this would be an example where pre-marital relations and cohabitation did happen. It is not rare (our ancestors tended to be less religious and "proper" than we like to pretend). The two never got married and actually eventually married two different people :p
TIP: When asking for records from Italy, do NOT ask for an "estratto." ALWAYS ask for a "copia integrale." A photocopy of the original Act will contain more information
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