Bigamy was all to common and is often the biggest surprise to people starting their research. Suddenly the family makeup changes and it is sometimes hard to get to the bottom of the changes as there is no death of a partner. Also bear in mind that they may not have actually married the previous partner as living under the brush was an accepted for in Scots law as a common law wife or husband they just had to make the simple open declaration that they were a couple, though if they were in the local congregation the minister would usually hound them and they would appear in the Kirk Sessions if the children were to be baptised. How it was treated vary greatly from minister to minister but they would be fined for misconduct in the Kirk Session before the union was "accepted". After 1855 they just fibbed to the registrar and invented a marriage date and place as there was no check on it...this leads to anomalies when later children have a different date of parent's marriage on the registry entry. Also first or "German" cousins were supposed to declare the relationship before the banns were read as it was at the minister's discretion as to whether to allow the marriage in church and also it had to be declared in a civil ceromony to the Registrar who duly noted the relations ship on the marriage register. Of course the majority flouted this and kept quiet. Technically until after WW1 when the law was changed, this first cousin relationship was not an officially "prohibited" marriage. This stems from the old Canon law based on the Bible in which first cousins are not specifically mentioned so technically it was OK...but more traditional ministers would not allow it and Bishops applied discretion before issuing a Licence for the marriage. Remember marriage could be by licence or Banns. Licence was more common in England as it meant more privacy as the Banns were not read. This was covered by intending bride and groom swearing an oath that there was no impediment to marriage. In a nutshell family research turns up skeletons and secrets of the past by the bucketful as also examining cause of death on death certs opens up other cans full of worms in some cases....just depends how deep you research. Personally I leave no stone unturned when I suspect something as it sometimes means that there is a particular genetic trait appearing in the gene pool.....but I am very cautious about telling my family about these kind of things...like a rellie of mine found dead in someone else's flat two days after death by alchoholic poisoning...it made the local papers and there were more in that line who went the same way. Their death cert had a two day period for date of death and was later amended by a correction entry after the inquest and coroner's report. Had I not pulled the death cert I would never have known....then I was on the lookout for this in theat family and pulled more death certs to establish the pattern. It all started as I remembered from my childhood an aunt who was always pie eyed when we visited her and as a young child I was well feared of her as I did not understand what was going on and nobody explained it. Even my gt grandfather never acknowledged that he was the eldest child of his father's second marriage and that he had 4 half siblings..that was the biggest surpise that I sprung on my family as many people knew him personally and he never ever mentioned it to anyone.....his father's first wife died as he is mentioned as a widow on his second marriage and some of the children from the first marriage were with my gt grandfather on one census...so off I went for the first marriage and found it documented in the parish registers in neighbouring Ayrshire and thus the births of the children from the first marriage.... So keep an open mind and discard your personal values and become a person of Victorian times appreciating the way or world as it was then and always research in depth.... Happy hunting Anton