The wife was born in Jamaica but the son's baptismal record states quite clearly that the parents were not married. I rather think that he would have to produce a copy of that record as well as his parent's marraiage certificate. So far as is known the son did not write any memoirs or such. Three of the parent's 12 children had children and only two had grandchildren. Neither of the two families - one family in Australia and one in Canada - have any obituaries. As far as the parents were concerned I have the wife's from the Scotsman and the husband's from the Gleaner in Jamaica. I also have the entries from Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae for both the son and the branch that has no descendants. There is no inkling of anything in any of these but this is not something that I would expect to be broadcast. Unfortunately, I have not had access to local newspapers. According to the father's will, he was married to "my dear wife" and left her a liferent in most of his estate both in Scotland and Jamaica. It took some time to find the marriage entry because occurred twenty years after the first child was born. My feeling is that whether two people were married or not was really not of great importance in Jamaica. It only began to matter if there were a reason for it to matter. Susan At 06:32 AM 4/13/2005 +0100, you wrote: > >In this case, if the wife was a native of Jamaica, could there have been >some sort of traditional 'joining ceremony' in Jamaica, at the start of >her liason with her husband, meaning that all their children would have >been considered to be the local equivalent of 'legitimate' from day one, >but when the family's ties to Scottish culture, ethics and laws became >stronger in later years, a formal reassertion of their marriage under >Scottish practice then became necessary to 'underwrite' the sincerity of >their vows and thus allow the son's advancement? Did the son write any >memoirs, or are there any articles (perhaps in 1856) or obituaries of >the family in local newspapers? > >Lawrence