It Ain't Necessarily So

[benny1982]

I think there are some family mysteries surrounding illegitimacy and other things that cannot be answered unfortunately. I have an ancestor who was baptised as a baseborn child in 1822 and there is no mention of a father on the baptism but his mother had 3 other children. I have not yet been able to find any illegitimacy orders etc. Seems his mum was a bit of a girl lololol.

[drake]

I have one of those I think, but hey, life was hard then

[exiled brummie]

I now have a copy of my g g grandmother's baptismal entry (original entry, not a transcript), which shows that she simply never knew her father's name when she grew up. His name, address and occupation match exactly those for the father's name on her elder brother's marriage certificate.

Reckon we can now put this thread to sleep.

[mfwebb]

On the marriage certificate of my great grandfather, Charles Webb, his father's name is blank. I later found out that his mother remarried as a "widow" when Charles was only 2 years old. A case of him genuinely not knowing who his father was, as opposed to him being illegitimate. I have no other proof that Charles' father had died -- many years of searching have failed to find his death certificate, including me buying 4 "obvious" ones which turned out not to be him.

On the other hand, when my grandmother Alice Laycock married at the age of 33 her father is shown as deceased, along with his name and occupation, although he had died when Alice was also 2 years old.

Alice's mother obviously talked about her father, whereas Charles' mother obviously never mentioned him -- or she told Charles the truth about his father and he refused to acknowledge him!! I shall never know.

[exiled brummie]

Malcolm, we clearly have very similar situations. My g g grandmother Mary (2nd name Critchley) was born in 1834. Her mother Sarah married again in 1837, status widow. Right now I am trying to find information about Sarah's 1st marriage, so far with no success whatsoever. I THINK I have found the burial record for Mary's father. This is dated 1836, which means Mary was only 2 when he died.

Mary had a brother Edward (2nd name Windsor) 7 years older than her. He names his father as Thomas Johnson, Coach Painter on his marriage certificate, information that tallies exactly with that given on the baptismal entries for Edward and Mary that have just come to light.

Apart from Sarah's 1st marriage, there is also the puzzle of where the two 2nd names came from. They were clearly of some family importance as my grandmother, born in 1887, was given Windsor as her 2nd name.

Thanks for your interest.

Best wishes

David

[Ohren_search]

I have a birth cert where the father isn't named. He is my gg grandfather's wife's youngest son, and my gg gf and his wife split (and allegedly divorced, but I haven't found proof of this yet) some time before he was born. So either it was my gg gf's son and his wife disowned him (her children's marriage certs have the father down as dead, though he lived many years after they got married), or she had him by some random unnamed man. I'm not sure that this child was the cause of the split, as my gg gf had a child by another woman two years previously.

So it's always possible that the father was disowned on the birth cert.