Find Ancestors

if you know the surname before marriage of the wife you can search for a second marriage for her at Ancestry

for instance if she was Smith before she married and Jones after

do an 'exact search'

and put only the two surnames in the 'spouse last name' box

if you do that with Smith and Jones you get 104 results where the spouse's surname was 'Smith or Jones' ( or sometimes there is a third surname as well )

a divorced woman's surname at birth and surname after first marriage are usually both shown on her second marriage record

so this could show there was likely a divorce ... but will not help if there was but the spouse did not remarry :-)

Thanks. I was only trying to see if it was the correct person before trying to contact randomly. When you have a fairly common name I think it is much better to try and narrow it down a bit to save yourself writing to a million people!

remember that deaths after 2005 do not show in the on line indexes so it is possible that the spouse died after that date

I agree with Flick, it is best to get information about living people from the people themselves and not to search without their knowledge

( if the person is possibly one's parent for instance , and is estranged or was not known since birth, I can understand wanting to try to verify information first ...... otherwise it seems best not to intrude on privacy just for the sake of a family tree for instance )

Why not write to the man? Much better than trying to delve into his private life without his knowledge or consent