Paula, This probably will not help but I have run into this situtation. I was told a great-uncle was never married. I got this from all the members of my Dad's family and they all knew him personally. Moreover, I found him with his father and a widowed Aunt in 1900c and he is marked 'unmarried". Well, I heard from another researcher who had a gr-aunt and a marriage to a man by this name, (its unusual and I know this whole family very well and it has to be him). The marriage took place in a county just above where she lived and probably he was living there at the time too Her mother wrote the permission for her to marry him. There was a son who took the his name but no one thinks they ever lived together. The girl died soon after and her mother raised the child. I have never been able to find this son except the one census (1900 too, in the 'home' Co, not where the father was). He may have d in WWI, that family thinks. Now, was this a case of making the baby ligitimate? If so, why not marry at home where everyone could see they WERE married; she did have the baby there, after all! Was it NOT his child but he gave it his name? Why would his family not know abt this, what ever it was? Did they m away from home so no one could look up the date of the marriage? Its a puzzel And there are no aunts or uncles or my Dad alive to ask abt it! Carleen