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  1. #1
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    Default Need your opinions/experiences.

    Hi All...Happy New Year.
    I just wanted some opinions or experiences on the following. I have a relative who was married in 1906. Their only child was born in 1920. So far I haven't come across such a long time between marriage and children. In fact, quite the opposite. Does anyone else have such a long time frame for children in their research? Thanks

  2. #2
    Super Moderator - Completely bonkers and will never change.
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    My great-great-grandparents married in 1864 but their first child wasn't born until 1875.
    Even today you hear of cases where people have been married for many years with the wife miscarrying multiple times.

    Have you checked the GRO Historic Births index to 1911 and the ordinary GRO Index after that (both give the mother's maiden name) to make sure that they didn't have a child/children who died very young, i.e. especially before the 1911 census?

    Pam
    Vulcan XH558 - “Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.”

  3. #3

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    Pam beat me to it! I was about to ask whether they only had one surviving child!
    Alternatively, what did he do for a living? For example, if he was military, they might have had ages in different residences...

  4. #4
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    Lesley makes a good point. However, sometimes nature just works that way. A school friend was born many years after her parents' marriage. She had no siblings. When she married, she and her husband decided not to delay having a family, just in case she too had problems. And she did, although eventually she had a child. My inlaws married in 1945 but their only child was not born until 1950. I could cite two other examples more contemporary to yours if you need. pwholt

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by pat fowles View Post
    Hi All...Happy New Year.
    I just wanted some opinions or experiences on the following. I have a relative who was married in 1906. Their only child was born in 1920. So far I haven't come across such a long time between marriage and children. In fact, quite the opposite. Does anyone else have such a long time frame for children in their research? Thanks
    How strange - I was pondering exactly the same thing yesterday.
    My gt gt aunt married in July 1892. The first child appeared in April 1901, followed by 1904, 1906, 1909 & 1912.
    GRO shows no births 1892-1900.
    1911 Census shows 4 children (3 living, 1 dead).
    Father was a School Caretaker/Miner, so not away from home ...

    Jane

  6. #6
    thewideeyedowl
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    Default A child comes when it comes...

    Happy New Year to you, Pat...

    No, I do not think it is in any way strange - though, admittedly, unusual - that a child (often an 'only') is born ten years or so after the parents got married.

    It happened to me: my one and only descendant was born 16 years and three months after I got married. After all those years, the child was a complete and utter surprise - and has continued to be so (!).

    And it happened to my maternal grandfather: the only child of his marriage was born was born in 1914, eleven years after he and his wife had wed in 1903. (There was also another child by another woman, but that's another story...)

    At the other end of the scale, sometimes there is late 'extra' child: my great-great Ezard grandparents had nine children - the first eight were born in the first 18 years of their marriage (1840-1858) and their last child was born at the time they were celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary (1865). Hannah, my great-great-grandmother, was then 45. (This was definitely their own child; they were not passing off a daughter's child as their own, a 'cover-up' I found in one of the IoW lines.) So I reckon it was a love-match between those great-great-grandparents.

    Swooping off.

    Owl

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by pat fowles View Post
    Hi All...Happy New Year.
    I just wanted some opinions or experiences on the following. I have a relative who was married in 1906. Their only child was born in 1920. So far I haven't come across such a long time between marriage and children. In fact, quite the opposite. Does anyone else have such a long time frame for children in their research? Thanks
    Hi Pat

    Not quite that long but my wife's family has a great aunt marrying in 1910 and then having her first child in 1920 but there was a good explanation to do with biology and infidelity. She ran off with a travelling salesman in early 1920 and shortly afterwards became pregnant. History doesn't record why she and her first husband (she married the salesman in due course) didn't have any children because plainly she was able to have them. She had a second child with her soon-to-be second husband after being divorced by her first husband.

    Probably not what you were looking for but I sympathise with your underlying interest in why it took so long to have a baby. Maybe........!

    Tony
    "People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.” Edmund Burke

  8. #8

    Default

    In case anyone is wondering, I deleted an Off Topic post and its follow-up because it related to events that happened after 1978, and the query relates to events in 1920.

    As it says in out T&C, we do not allow posts that could involve (potentially) living people.

  9. #9
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    Default Thanks

    Thanks everyone for your replies. It's a very interesting topic. The person in question was my Dad. He didn't have any siblings. His parents were married in Lagos <1906> and his mother returned to Southport Lancs to give birth (which I also find a bit odd). Can't find a record for her arrival in the UK then, but I do have her departure back to Lagos with my Dad when he was a few months old.

  10. #10

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    It was fairly common back then for women in the tropics to head back when they found that they were expecting. The child (and mother) mortality rates for Europeans in tropical counties were high. Indeed, I’m surprised that she took him back before he was 1.

    Don’t forget that even something as simple as the directives for midwives to wash their hands before attending a mother in labor were only sent out in the UK at the end of the 1800s as medics finally accepted the link between bacteria and disease! It took over 200 years between discovery of the bugs and the link being accepted by the top of the medical profession....

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