It appears I wasn’t the only one who saw the title of MyHeritage’s new Quebec collection of records — Quebec Marriage Licenses, 1926-1997 — and knew something was wrong. Quebec has never issued marriage licenses.
Soon after learning about the error, MyHeritage corrected the title to Quebec Marriage Returns, 1926-1997.
Daniel Horowitz at MyHeritage wrote me to say the issue had been brought to their attention. “As always we hear our users, so we have changed the title and description as you can see below and on our website.”
This is the description of the collection that appears on the MyHeritage website.
Starting in the 1920s the Provincial Health Service in the Province of Quebec instigated a program to record marriages conducted in the Province.
These records, initially created for statistical purposes, contain similar information one would find on a traditional marriage license – this includes the names of the bride and groom, their birthdates, date, and place of the marriage, and a number of other facts which evolved and changed over the 70 years this collection covers.
This includes information such as the bride’s and groom’s occupations, addresses before and after marriage, religion, citizenship, racial origin, and native language. Starting in 1975, information about the parents of the bride and groom, including their names and birthplaces, was also recorded and included in the searchable index of this collection.
A common social and religious tradition among Roman Catholic families in Quebec is to give their sons the given name of Joseph and their daughters the given name of Marie (or Mary) along with other given names that the child would use throughout his or her life. This tradition is reflected in this collection with a large percentage of men using “Joseph” and women using “Marie” or “Mary” as part of their full legal names.
Until the late 1960s and into the early 1970s it was normal for a woman to take her husband’s last name and drop her maiden name for social and colloquial purposes – although her legal surname was still her maiden name. Since 1976 women, upon marriage in Quebec, cannot legally change their surname to their husband’s surname without a special ruling that is issued by the Provincial Government and requires significant effort and costs.
Not all fields on the original documents have been transcribed and it is recommended to carefully read the scanned document presented with each marriage return.
“Until the late 1960s and into the early 1970s it was normal for a woman to take her husband’s last name and drop her maiden name for social and colloquial purposes – although her legal surname was still her maiden name. ”
And this is why I don’t use myheritage. When I am looking for family members I might not know every husband the women had. How do I find them when myheritage uses married names by default in the family trees? It takes 4 times as long to read a pedigree if I have to find a maiden name buried among the family names. It’s a waste of time.
That doesn’t make sense what MyHeritage does with women’s names. I had no idea they did that. I kept my name when I married and would be annoyed to see someone list me with another name. Me? I’ve never understood why women change their name when they marry or keep their ex-husband’s name, but that’s a whole other conversation. 🙂
I have found that the scanned information was confused with another marriage record, because the names to not match, as well as the information given.
I have found that the scanned information was confused with another marriage record, because the names did not always match, as well as the information given.
In early Quebec church registers marriages are recorded saying after publishing of bans and sometimes by license. What was the licence? Who issued it? And would it be another document to look for?
Anybody? Any idea what the license was?
I’m still working with friends to figure out what the “licence” referred to in the marriage return is. What we do know is it is likely not like the marriage licence in other provinces.
A friend wrote: Yes licences did take the place of bans in early times. The Governor issued them.
Back in the 1990s the Church of Latter Day Saints found a collection of licences in a vault in the treasury department in Quebec City. They apparently microfilmed them, but we don’t know what happened to that project.
It was not unusual for a military person to be married by license.
The licence also acted a tax – anyone marrying in the Roman Catholic Church had to pay – non-Catholics did not pay – so a licence was introduced when banns were not read.