Secrets and Lies

We've got things on both sides. A grandfather raised by a foster mum whose mother wasn't married and who we can't trace for certain. An illegitimate great grandmother who was kindly given a father by the vicar who wrote the wedding certificate, and a grandmother we can't find in the 1911 census. She told us a story about what happened to her, but much of what she told us has been proved untrue.

My paternal grandparents had 8 children. It wasn’t until after they died it came out that they hadn’t been married when their eldest was born in the 1920s. They married two years later. That must have been quite the scandal back then.

My mum always believed that her great uncle was the captain of the Carpathia which was the ship that saved some survivors of the Titanic. After much research into my family tree it turns out that her great uncle along with many other of my mums relatives were boat people. They worked and lived on the canals around Widnes and Warrington.

When my auntie did some family research, we found out that my grandfather and my great aunt had been brought up in a workhouse. I don’t think my dad ever knew that about his father and aunt, but he’d died by then do we couldn’t ask him. So much sadness had to be hidden years ago.

I was in my 50s when I was contacted by someone who turned out to be my half sister. Neither my brother nor I had any inkling of an older sibling who had been adopted at birth. She and I look so alike that we often asked if we are twins, a bit disconcerting for me as she is 7 years older than me!

I too listened to the Radio 4 programme’The Baroness’. Whilst the father seemed to be behind the scam and went to extraordinary lengths to perpetuate it the mother was complicit. The impact and hardship on the innocent children was terrible.

I found it fascinating, NanKate but I also thought it threw up a lot of questions. Didn't she say they moved to a huge mansion, but then only listed four rooms on the ground floor? Or did I miss something? And why would you wear a hat with an evening dress? And I thought it was strange that she didn't sound posh, having had such a lot drilled into her as a child. And why didn't the neighbours just laugh when they announced that they'd changed from Mr and Mrs Watkyns to Baron and Baroness? It did sound dreadful though.

Yes Vegansrock it was an excellent podcast about DNA.

I too was confused with some of the story SpringsEternal. Where did the money come from to buy the large old house they lived in?

One of the few things I like about the 21st century is that mostly there aren’t the family secrets and shame often brought upon women. The men took no responsibility. Having said that some ethnic women now have to live by a strict code.

Finally the podcasts by Lucy Worsley about women murderers (whether they did it or not) are fascinating.

If anyone else is a podcast listener please give your suggestions maybe on another thread.

My mother and aunt were born the wrong side of the blanket and my Nan's husband agreed to bring them up as his. It was quite the scandal as my biological Great Grandfather was a well known businessman, local councillor and Justice of the Peace. We used to meet this mysterious man we called Uncle but nobody could ever explain where he came from. Although my mother explained when we were teenager, the secret had to be maintained even though my Mum (and sister) worked for my Mum's biological father for years.
My Mum was in her 60's before I persuaded my grandfather to sign an affidavit to say he was my Mum's father and she was so thrilled to be finally acknowledged. All those years she felt the shame of being a "b@st@rd" (her words, not mine) and being hidden as a shameful secret didn't disappear but she was still thrilled. The sad thing is that if she had been a boy, she would have been welcomed into her biological, paternal family with open arms.

My MiL was adopted at age one, We have the adoption papers. Her birth parents were married and her birth father died in WW1. When MiL was getting married , she wrote to her birth mother ,presumably with an invite to the wedding. She was told not to contact her birth mother again as she didn't want her other children to know about her. Mil was given her birth father"s war medals. We can not find if there was any connection between the 2 families. or how she knew where her birth mother lived, just a few miles away. Both a long way from their origins.

My daughter had a little girl friend and I knew her parents well. They had 3 boys, then the girl. They were all stocky and dark haired. My husband knew a guy who was divorced but had 2 boys who were at school with my son.

He told my husband he had been sleeping with this woman (the mother of 4) but he wasn’t in love with her so their relationship had fizzled out. She then gives birth to a skinny baby boy with ginger hair just like him, but her husband did not know she was cheating on him so assumed it was his baby.

He is now in his 30s and a lovely lad but he’s going to get a shock if he ever does a DNA test because the lover is of Polish descent. His mother and the man he thought was his Dad have both passed away now.

Illegitimacy was a big source of shame in ages past and often brought ruin and rejection on the mother.
I recall beginning a teaching career in the early 1980s with another young woman. We were in our early 20’s both straight from completing our teacher training qualification. She was doing her “probationary year” necessary to gain qualified teacher status, in a church school. She fell pregnant to her boyfriend (now her husband). She was fired immediately on moral grounds. (You could be fired during your probation period quite easily unfortunately) She never became a teacher as she couldn’t complete the “probationary year” The head teacher wouldn’t sign off the work she had done because he believed that her morals behaviour was unfitting for a teacher. There were strict limits on how long you had to complete the programme once you started and had to have the sign off from the head, even if you hadn’t done well, in order to redo or complete it elsewhere.

I discovered, as an adult and unfortunately once my mother had early on set dementia, that she was born as a result of a 'liaison' between my grandmother (at 18 yrs old) and the son of the family who owned 'the big house' where she worked as a parlor maid. I also found out that she spent the first 7 years of her life in an orphanage, remaining there until my grandmother got married and went to collect her. I know the name of her father as he paid maintenance for the first 16 years of her life even though he isn't named on the birth certificate - I have his surname as one of my middle names as do one of my daughters and my granddaughter. She was a brilliant mum to me and my two sisters and we miss her so much even after 30 years. I do keep meaning to do the DNA test, it could throw up some family I guess.

What an interesting thread. Most of us here have G’ parents who have lived through 2 w wars and I can’t comprehend what they had to endure. Is it any wonder there have been so many illegitimate births. My Mum was illegitimate - she never really accepted it and she suffered years of depression ( Irish Catholic ).

I was born in 1946 my mother was unmarried, 'my father' denied I was his, 4 years later they married, throuhout my early years I never felt part of the 'family' I did not find out until I was about to get married and my mother was worried that my birth name would be on the banns so she told me what had happened, pennies dropped with a crash, I was an outsider always had been always would be, I could forgive the secret all those years, but fact that my mother told me she had wanted to put me up for adoption, and had been dissuaded by her sisters hurt more than anything else.

Sohamsue

I was born in 1946 my mother was unmarried, 'my father' denied I was his, 4 years later they married, throuhout my early years I never felt part of the 'family' I did not find out until I was about to get married and my mother was worried that my birth name would be on the banns so she told me what had happened, pennies dropped with a crash, I was an outsider always had been always would be, I could forgive the secret all those years, but fact that my mother told me she had wanted to put me up for adoption, and had been dissuaded by her sisters hurt more than anything else.

Oh that is sad. I wonder if your Mum didn’t mean it to come out like that. Maybe she meant whatever baby she had, not meaning you if that makes sense.

Just after WW2 one of my Aunts “went away” to the city for a year, everyone was pretty sure she had a child and gave it up.
She never married although she did have a “man friend” for a while in her 50s

I discovered through research int y father's family on Ancestry that my father's father had been born to a single mother in the early 1890s.
It was the 1891 census form that set me off, in it he is listed as the son of the head of the house, whose was listed as in his early 50s likewise his wife. There were a number of other much older children on the form. I obtained a copy of his birth certificate where his mother's first name was different from the name on the census, his father's name was left blank.
The name of his mother was not on the census form, so I assumed he had been brought up by his maternal grandparents to hide the shame of illegitimacy. O n his marriage certificate his grandfather is named as his father.
I later discovered from family members he believed his mother was his sister.She had left the family home after his birth and worked at various live in jobs, then got married in her early forties to a farmer and emigrated with him to a commonwealth country.She had never revealed his father's identity, but I remember my grandmother saying that his father must have been a very good looking man, because my grandfather did not look like any of his mother's plain looking family, and she had been first attracted to him by his very handsome appearance!
These good looks of my unknown great grandfather have been passed down through the generations now, my father had resembled his father, one of my sons looks like him and also my grandson and great grandson!

My MIL still maintains that my husband was three months premature to this day !
Her own parents, long deceased, told me many years ago that she was 18 and discovered she was pregnant by her fiancé, my FIL.
His parents were disgusted and so this story was concocted to save face for his family who had a respectable standing in the community.
My FILs father never went to their wedding sighting important business as the excuse.
So keen was she to please her in-laws that she went along with this story even though everyone knew differently.
I honestly think she believes this story herself now having towed the line for sixty odd years long after her in-laws died.
We just smile and nod !

My grandfather had only his mum’s name on his birth certificate. She was in service. He was brought up by his grandparents, alongside an uncle and aunt younger than him. His grandfather was actually named as his father on his marriage certificate.
He must have kept in touch with his mum as, when his wife died, he took his young son and my mum, a young baby, to live with her in a far off city. I learnt this from a census but I did not realise it was his mum as she had changed her name, both first name and surname.
When she died, the man she was living with registered her death as his wife, under these new names. Ten days later her brother contacted the Registrar and had the death certificate officially overwritten and corrected. It certainly took some tracking down, but it does explain why I eventually came to be born in that town, far from where my grandparents had grown up.
Mum’s father died when mum was only nine, so she never found out the whole story. She was brought up by a loving stepmother and showed no interest in finding out about her natural family. It was only after mum died that I felt able to do any research. It made me very sad to discover that my mum had aunts, uncles and cousins living close to where she lived in later years. Strangely she and Dad had moved back to the area where my grandfather grew up. Unfortunately I have not managed to track down any living relatives now from that family. But I am surrounded by the graves of my ancestors.

my mum was from southern ireland and refused to mention her family apart from having a sister and her Dad had died would never mention her mum when my mum passed i found an address for her sister in Ireland and wrote to her she wrote back but again never any mention of her family i only had this one letter and never heard any more even though i tried to find relations they to this day remain a mystery

My grandmother had a son my father but would never tell who was his father eventually she told him that on her death bed she would tell all, she didn't and he died before DNA testing came out but I know who he was a married man! This was in South Wales and apart from a photo of him that I would like to see if my dad resembles him I have no interest in any of them.

My great grandmother had 3 children with her surname then married their father and had 4 more with his surname. Nothing said in the tiny village they lived. My grandma got pregnant with my mum by the local bigwig. Her 6 brothers arranged a shotgun marriage, it didn't last so my mum was basically brought up.by a single mum. This was all common knowledge in the community

Mallin

My birth mother had numerous still births and miscarriages after she’d arranged my adoption before birth.
She told her sisters and sister in laws, that it was because she had given me away.
As it happens, it was because I was a rhesus baby and she lied to drs and hospital staff and didn’t tell them about having an illegitimate first baby.
If she had, then her subsequent heart ache for 7 dead babies, might not have had to happen.

Rhesus baby? Isn't that yo do with your blood group?

How terribly sad, Mallin. She probably felt so ashamed about giving you away with everything that followed. I know a lady who suffered terrible tragedies before they realised that her problem was that she was rhesus negative and that was why she was continuing to lose babies as her first baby (whom she had miscarried) was rhesus positive. At that time, Rhesus disease was not routinely tested for.