Nicholas P Fleming/Julia Kenny
P�l's Granduncle by (a previous) marriage


This cert has a complicated history which I have set out elsewhere and reproduce below :

On 14 October 1925, Nicholas married for the third time, his wife was Julia Mary Kenny (shown in the cert as Sheila, and known in the family as Ju).

There is only one Nicholas Fleming marriage recorded in the Civil Records on this day. There are, however, some odd aspects to the entry in the civil registry. Both Nicholas and his father are recorded as merchants; the bride's name is given as Sheila; Nicholas's address is given as Longford Terrace in Monkstown; and the ceremony took place in University Church on St. Stephen's Green.

When I got the cert originally I thought it was the wrong couple. The only similarities with our Nicholas were that, apart from sharing a name, both men were also widowers. I thought the "merchant" tag quite alien and could not, for the life of me, figure out where University Church came into the picture. At that stage I was not even sure of the date of our Nicholas's marriage to the nearest 20 years.

The Guinness company records narrowed down the date to 14 October 1925 and so I resurrected the cert I had previously rejected. I now think I have the right cert but the odd features still need some explaining.

The description of Nicholas as a merchant may simply be a mistake or may refer to some form of contracting out practiced by Guinness at the time. Giving his father's occupation as a merchant may well have derived from being told that father and son shared the same occupation. I had not realised it, but the names Julia and Sheila can be used as equivalent. The Irish version of Julia is S�le. The wife's maiden name is Kenny in both cases and the subsequent description of our Nicholas's wife varies between Julia and Sheila on the different children's birth certificates. University Church is explained as a chapel of ease to Harrington St., which was Julia's parish - so there is no specific university connection. The best man on the cert is the same as our Nicholas's best man at his second marriage to the first Julia. I don't know why Nicholas was in Longford Terrace in Monkstown - hopefully this can be clarified at a later stage. So I am taking it the cert applies to our Nicholas.