Illegitimate births

Family history can be a real eye opener. No real illegitimate children found yet. But my Great-Great Grandfather took his life because he kept getting pains in his head. There was a newspaper report that I have a copy of. A female relative died in a workhouse due to hysteria, 3 months after her daughter was born. Reading between the lines she probably had Post Partum depression. A Great Great Aunt married when she was 14. She obviously lied to the priest saying she was 18, age on her marriage certificate, but her birth certificate and census say otherwise. My paternal grandfather died in a Japanese POW, so my Grandmother left my dad [3 years old] with her mother and disappeared up to Glasgow. We found out that she worked in a department store. There she met the man that I knew to be my Grandfather. They went on to live together, on and off, in London, but he also kept company with another woman in the next street. They went on to have two children, but didn't get married until the late 60's. So initially they were illigitimate for a while. It can be a bit addictive finding out what people got up to,

"*Grandmama*, Yes, I have heard this about syphilis. The first baby born was usually OK, because the disease hadn't progressed, but for the next few years each baby was affected. they either were miscarried, or died very young or if they survived they might have various disabilities. Then it would go into remission, and pregnancies would be successful, but eventually it would recur and the mother would be seriously ill. Someone estimated that one in seven of the population suffered from syphilis in the 19th century - no wonder mothers told their girls to keep their hands on their ha'penny when dating.

If only we could go back and ask questions.

For a long time, I couldnt find any records for my 2xgreat grandfather, Joshua, before his marriage.
There was a father's name written on his marriage certificate, but I couldnt find any trace of anyone with that name, either..

Bit by bit, I have found enough to solve most, though not quite all of it.

Basically, Joshua had been brought up by his grandmother but, judging by the censuses, under the pretence that she was his mother, and that he had a much older brother (his uncle) and a married sister (his real mother), Mary.

It is rather strange, because Mary's husband, Jacob (!!!) was named as the father on the baptism record that I found for Joshua, and Mary and Jacob married only a couple of months after that baptism.

Why, if Jacob was genuinely the father, was Joshua brought up by his grandmother and with her surname?
Was Jacob really the father?
But why would his name be on the baptism record unless he was the father? For his wife-to-be's sake, to make the birth, and her, more respectable?
If that were the case, why wasn't Joshua also raised as Jacob's son, or at the very least given his surname?
There are so many questions that I will never have answers to, but at least I think I now know why Joshua gave the name Jonas when asked his father's name for the marriage certificate. I can just picture him giving his own details then deliberately letting it be assumed that his father's surname was the same as his own.

I fear his wife Ann might have had a similarly complicated background, as I have still not managed to find a single record for her prior to their marriage, even though she was supposedly born in the same area and lived there at the time of the marriage.

To add to my post I have more info. I had 2 sisters who were born before our parents got married.
Also my DH's mum had him when she was 17 and forced to have him adopted. This was in 1959. It was only in 2017 that with the help of the adoption agency that we found his birth family. His mum married a few years after his birth to a Ghanaian man and went on to have 5 more children. His mum died in 1995 but we have met his 5 half siblings. It's not been all plain sailing as my DH had to give up work at the same time as we found them but only his brother is in constant touch. There are four sisters but they don't ever get in touch. My DH says I've not had them all my life so I'm not bothered now. I think he feels a bit hurt because he's been in and out of hospital and no one has rung to see if he's ok.

I just don't understand this need to forge close connections with people who are in fact complete strangers. I can understand that adoptees are interested in their medical family history but other than that it seems pointless. So many people have been disappointed in family searches, a fact not highlighted by TV shows.

Oldnproud Maybe Joshua and his wife were not in a position to look after their son and bring him up at first, so he was left with his grandparents until they could do so? That could have gone on for long enough for even his grandparents to consider him genuinely theirs. Or could the baby's real father have scarpered, and Joshua stepped into the gap? He might have needed a wife to keep house and help on a farm, or he might have always wanted to marry her.

Quite a few illegitimate births in my FH, some to the Lord of the Manor. In each case, the church christening record states ‘xx recognises he is the father’, I guess the local vicars knew what was going on. In one case, my ‘housekeeper’ ancestor produced 3 recognised sons and his lordship only married her when she was 6 months pregnant with the fourth, and that was to protect an entailed inheritance. I also have a collection of more humble illegitimate ancestors.

Like you I too have been looking into my family history and I have unraveled a few family stories or should I say found out a lot of things that my grandparents thought they could take to their graves with them!. The strange case of my grandfathers parents who constantly were changing their names !never found a marriage certificate for them , so I’m left wondering if one of them had married outside of their faith ?. One thing for sure family history is never boring

Someone may have said this already, but surely the term “illegitimate” is not used nowadays?

Elegran

Oldnproud Maybe Joshua and his wife were not in a position to look after their son and bring him up at first, so he was left with his grandparents until they could do so? That could have gone on for long enough for even his grandparents to consider him genuinely theirs. Or could the baby's real father have scarpered, and Joshua stepped into the gap? He might have needed a wife to keep house and help on a farm, or he might have always wanted to marry her.

Those things are certainly all possible reasons why Jonas and Mary didn't raise Joshua, Elegran.

It was a very small community, so you would imagine that everyone would almost certainly have known that Mary was his mother, and chances are that they probably even knew, or at least suspected, who the father was.

It has just occurred to me that there were four months between Joshua's birth and the baptism - four months in which he would already have been known as Joshua ** (mother's maiden name), so even if it were possible, why change that if he was going to remain with his grandma.

But then again, that wouldn't explain why was he recorded as her son on the censuses. 🤔

Also, Joshua's grandma had been a widow for 17 years when he was born, so respectability-wise, what was there to gain by pretending that she was his mother?
(Unless she genuinely was the mother, and the baptism was a way of hiding that fact? - but that feels like a twist to far in the plot)

She had a low-paid mill job, so it can't have been easy for her. She also had an unmarried son who lived with her all her life. He worked too, which would have helped, but they were certainly not wealthy - he eventually died in the poorhouse.. Mind you, so eventually did one of the three children that Mary and Jonas went on to have together. It is possible from the dates of their deaths that they were both in the poorhouse at the same time at some point.

sodapop

I just don't understand this need to forge close connections with people who are in fact complete strangers. I can understand that adoptees are interested in their medical family history but other than that it seems pointless. So many people have been disappointed in family searches, a fact not highlighted by TV shows.

Maybe they will find a connection? I knew of my half sister and half brother but didn't meet them for 30 years. I hadn';t seen my grandmother for over 40 years and nobody only my father's side of the family for 50 years. Getting to know them is fascinating, We are so alike yet so different. Working out what is nature and what is nurture is fun too. It certainly hasn't been pointless and some of it has helped me understand why I am so different from my mother's side in so many ways. I feel less like a square peg in a round hole.

My MIL was a twin and they were born to one of two very close sisters, the father being the brother in law, my MILs mother being single and remained single.

They were farmed out to another family and my MIL thought her mother was an Aunt who visited. Strangely, the two sisters and the whole family remained on extremely good terms.
Finally, the ‘Aunt’ spent her last years happily with my MIL.
The male twin never accepted what had happened and regarded his adopted mother as his mother.
It must have been a shock when not one but two babies turned up!

To think I could have my brother in law’s child (children) and all carry on happily is rather mind boggling.

Oldnproud

There were a lot of casual adoptions too. I was intrigued to see "adopted son, age 2" on a census of my Great-Grandparents. When I eventually tracked the boy's birth family, I discovered that his mother had died soon after giving birth to his baby sister, the grandparents took on the baby to help their son bring her up, but couldn't manage the 2 year old so he was 'adopted' by my great-grandparents who were neighbours (byt no relation).
He remained with them until he was in his twenties and got married.

Allira

Oldnproud

There were a lot of casual adoptions too. I was intrigued to see "adopted son, age 2" on a census of my Great-Grandparents. When I eventually tracked the boy's birth family, I discovered that his mother had died soon after giving birth to his baby sister, the grandparents took on the baby to help their son bring her up, but couldn't manage the 2 year old so he was 'adopted' by my great-grandparents who were neighbours (byt no relation).
He remained with them until he was in his twenties and got married.

Yes, it might be something like that.

I bet a lot of our ancestors would be horrified at the thought that many generations on, their descendants would be trying to piece together their lives and uncovering their 'shameful' secrets.

There will be some puzzlement when our future family researches their heritage. My husband adopted my son when he was 18!

My paternal grandmother had a very complicated/interesting family. I do wish I had spoken to her about it but I was only 14 when she died and in those days it was considered very impolite to ask adults personal questions.

Each to their own icanhandthemback just not for me, I'm happy with who I am and content with my own family.

Work on my family researching I made contact
with a son of my great Aunts, his parents had moved from North to South Wales a few months before he was born, years
later following great Aunts funeral he telephoned me to tell me
his mother was his grandmother and his older sister his mother, she had to wait until her mother died to claim her son ,he was 50 then and so upset

Fair enough, sodapop. But it was, for whatever reason, very important to me to find out more about my background.

When I see that word "illegitimate" I wonder which laws it refers to.
When the law was passed that said a married women became her husband's property and her children were also his property, I imagine that being born outside marriage escaped this trap. But in most communities (in the UK) until recent years women have been shamed for having a child outside marriage. Society blamed the woman.
The law has changed a lot. Women are legal entities even when married. Rape in marriage is a crime. But the phrase remained long after the law changed.
So many forced adoptions. So many desperate single mothers trying to keep a child and hold down a job. All to shore up the primacy of men in law and in control of families.

Does anyone feel its a bit intrusive to be ferreting about in other people's lives? Particularly if someone was unhappy about something and tried to keep it hidden. I feel like they still have rights even though they are dead.

I have family who are very interested and research family history but I really feel the dead should be left in peace.

We have inherited my late MIL and FILs letters from their wartime romance. He was from a commonwealth country and at the end of the war was demobbed back home so they had some years during the war and immediately after where their romance was by post. We've never opened a single letter but feel it would be inappropriate to throw them out. Not sure what to do in the future.

I'm a very private person so maybe that is why it feels uncomfortable to me.

M0nica

Peopel are putting far too much emphasis on the age gap I mentioned. This would not have been the only factor taken into account and anyway in some cases when aa woman had a child in her mid/late 40s, and then supposedly had one in her mid 50s the gap would be much less.

It is a question in these cases of looking at the whole picture, not just jumping to conclusions from one fact. In small communities families are known, their history, and the predilections of the fathers.

Why would people need to take any factors into account? A child is enrolled at school, "mother" is around so what does it matter if it is the birth mother, the grandmother or an adopted mother. Fair enough if it causes issues e.g. child has separation anxieties or something but otherwise it isn't anyone's business.

God knows how teachers gossiped when one of my kids announced he had 3 mothers, he had me as I gave birth to him, he had my mother who lived with us and that year he had my sister living with us, to him these 3 women loved and cared for him so as a 4 or 5 year old he just said they were all his mother. I think the teacher wanted to talk to a parent about something and asked if his mother was picking him up, his reaction was which one, I've got 3.

When a child is the produce of incest. It is a matter of concern. theworriedwell you clearly have no understanding of how small communities wok. The children my MiL taught were children whose families she had known as a child . Most families had lived in the same communities for several generations. Knowledge of what was happening, was a lot more substantial than gossip.

I have read articles by people brought up with seemingly older mothers who then later innlife discovered that their mother is one of their sisters and that their 'mother' is their grandmother, and in incest cases their father - is indeed their father and I can tell you that this can do deep psychological harm to the children involved.

I know that one of my father's aunts, from a very respectable family, became pregnant by a married man. She had the baby and later married a widowed man who already had some children, going on to have more of her own. I'm told that, at the time, it was considered quite shocking, but she was more accepted once she had actually got herself married - though sadly she was widowed relatively young.
She was my father's favourite aunt and I remember her myself. My father said that she was a proud woman who didn't like to accept help, but always looked after herself and her children well.

M0nica

When a child is the produce of incest. It is a matter of concern. theworriedwell you clearly have no understanding of how small communities wok. The children my MiL taught were children whose families she had known as a child . Most families had lived in the same communities for several generations. Knowledge of what was happening, was a lot more substantial than gossip.

I have read articles by people brought up with seemingly older mothers who then later innlife discovered that their mother is one of their sisters and that their 'mother' is their grandmother, and in incest cases their father - is indeed their father and I can tell you that this can do deep psychological harm to the children involved.

I asked you earlier if she'd reported the incest but apart from that why did she gossip about her students to you. You say it's a community where these things were known but originally you said these things were hidden.

Teachers gossiping about your parentage and possible incest probably caused some psychological damage as well
She was just a gossip wasn't she.