ABSTRACT
Insights into emergent stepfamilies and de facto stepfamilies can be gleaned from the requests for permission to marry. A bundle of documents with dispensations at the third and fourth degrees from the period between 1793 and 1797 contains several cases of stepfamilies. In comparison, 1798 was the year with the largest number of such requests during the period prior to 1800, containing sixty-two; these include seventeen involving stepfamilies. The supplicants frequently associate the potential stepmother's close kinship with her reliable and good care of the children and an ensuing mutual emotional attachment between this future spouse and her stepchildren. Any arrangements and dispositions that parents and step-parents may have been agreed to in past contracts or in wills could affect the outcome for full siblings, half-siblings from first or second marriage beds, and stepsiblings. The eighteenth-century dispensation requests explicitly address stepfathers in their social roles as fathers.
