General Chat

Was told the other night that one of my uncle does not have the same father as my mum and two brothers, first ive heard of this , he's the same surname as them when i asked how this was i was told 'convenience at the time', could my nan have actually done this, ie put the wrong name on BC? to be honest can't quite believe it and think it may be a porky but was looking for a bit of help/advice. thanks

If the name on the birth cert is the wrong one, I think there is little you can do to prove otherwise.

Had your Nan not covered up an illegitimate birth like that, the possibility is your uncle would have grown up with the stigma attached, and all the difficulties children and thier mothers had to face in those days, of being born out of wedlock, or to a different father. It was frowned upon.

So the story of 'convenience' at the time rings true to me. Your only hope is the unlikely event that you come across something, a diary, letters and such, that will prove or disprove the rumour.

thanks, my nan seemed to talk about her childhood and being alone after her partner died, never of the time she spent with him so think there may be some mystery there. she remarried aswell. and understand what you're saying then how it would have been, he was born in 60s.

Hi

I suppose a lot has to do with whether he is the eldest or not. If he is, then Nan would have had him by another man before she met and married Grandad, but if he was one of the younger ones, she may have had an affair. She may have been pregnant when she met grandad and he decided to take him on as his own. This has recently happened with a friend of ours.

I know it is sometimes hard to get our heads round, but people are just people and these things have always happened, but were swept under the carpet a lot more than these days.

In my own case my great grandad was supposed to have come back from the Boer war to find he had a 3 year old daughter so he married great gran. The 1901 census seemed to bear this out as she was named as his daughter. Wrong. On the 1911 census he named her as his step daughter and all subsequent children as his own, so I sent for the certificate. Her father was someone completely different.

We tend to think of the old days as being rather chaste and that unmarried sex and illegitimate babies only started to boom in the 60's. With experience I have found that only the 1900 to 1950s era were straight laced, before that and after that illegitimacy was rife.

Dianne xx

Too true Dianne. My Gt Gt Grandmother was illegitimate....and that was kept very quiet. I only found out when I got her birth cert and nearly fell over when I saw a strange name for the father. She was my Gt Gt Grandfather's second wife, and we were always told that she had been taken out of the workhouse to look after his first two children, but that wasn't the case at all.

There is a name which kept cropping up in the family, one Mary Fisher. Nobody seemed to know who she was...or if she was any relation to us at all. It turns out, she is my 3x gt Grandmother, and had married much later in life, and not to the man who fathered my Gt Gt Grandmother! I still haven't found out what became of him. There are no records, on census or otherwise of him, and I'm beginning to wonder if he actually existed anywhere other than the birth cert.

Its not uncommon to have a child that the husband isnt the father of,this can be a first ,middle or last child,,,,,,this can be the result of an affair during the marriage,,,,,,,,,,

this happened alot during the war years when men would come home to find an extra child or an expected child that couldnt possibly be his.!!

There is also the law that a child born into a marriage has its father as the male partner unless both sides object

And sometimes family tells porkies. So until you prove or disprove nothing is impossible. So many family whispers turn out to be just that family whispers with not truth to be found in 10, 000 miles.

Number get the birth certificate and the marriage certificate. then check the dates and see what transpires.

Certificates are difficult to get here after 1909, but finally managed to get it for 1912 I was always told my grandfather was 4 months old when my great grandparents married, 1911. Not true he was born 9 months to the day after they were married. Though she did have a son in 1906 who her mother raised.

Gail

this happened to my sons father,
he knew who his father was, even tho he had his siblings surname,
and when he went for his birth cert, his father was down as his mums, husband, what a shock he got
which was father to 6 of his siblings but not him and his sister,

turned out she was still married when she got with his dad, and it was easier to put his name than his real fathers, xxx

in my tree i found a lady who lol
gave supposedly birth in her 60s


when we know it was her daughters illegitimate child

thanks for all the replies, he is the youngest, born 65, nan's partner died 1970, i more think that it is my other uncle not wanting to be fully connected to this uncle becaus he's a bit of a black sheep in the family, been in trouble, i accept everyone for who they are so don't see his problem!