One of my husband's relatives is slowly working through an application process that involves some minor genealogical research. The task that she was stuck on involved my husband's great-grandparents: we knew where they were living when they got married, and we knew when their first child was born (and where that child was baptized), which gave us a rough bracket. But unfortunately, since this all happened in NJ, there was some uncertainty about precisely where to get the record.

But this is not my first genealogy research. I found the probable registrar, called, learned she was out to lunch (literally), and called back a few minutes after her expected return. She was very helpful, and put me on hold while she got out the book. The book starts in 1914, which was partway into our bracket, but it turns out the marriage was in 1915, so yay! I called the relative who was doing the research and we had a nice chat, during which she said she'd called the surviving daughter of this marriage, the son of another product of this marriage, etc. and no one seemed to have any idea of the marriage date. I thought nothing of it, because I'm basically not a very suspicious person.

I sent a summary email out to interested parties with the address for the registrar, and the state vital records people in case a Super Special (Apostille) copy might be required, and then hopped onto the laptop (with interruptions, because both kids are home today, A. because she is sick, T. because he had a half day) to enter the marriage. Then I looked at the timeline and went: Oh.

_That's_ why no one was talking about precisely when that marriage happened. A month and a day before the birth of the first child.

Hmmmm. R. and I are discussing whether or not it might be possible to get that branch of the family to agree to doing the ancestry genetics dance, to figure out whether their relatedness to ours is as expected, or less.