Genealogy Chat

No such thing as adoption in that era...........

If a birth cert was issued......a birth had occurred.

Look for a death for the first child with the name............you give no indication that you have done that

Did all of this take place in Australia?

The comments above refer to the UK.............................I know nothing whatsoever about Australian laws etc

Hi Pippa - as Shirley says, the recycling of names was not at all uncommon.

Did you ever actually find a possible death for the baby born 1884?

If you wish to give names and locations we'll see if there's anything further to be found.

can you delete your posting off General Chat please - not good to have two postings

It was often the norm to name the next same sex child after one that died . Often names ran in the family so would get reused if a child didn't survive.

I have instances in my own tree where this occurred

my great uncle, the one who we've found out suicided by shooting himself in a Station Hotel in Queensland (where his ghost still loiters apparently) we had thought was the son of my great grandmother and greatgrandfather as we have the birth certificate from 1887 with all their names on it. I wanted to see if the child whose delivery had caused the death of my ggrandfather's previous wife had lived, and have found that the same name as my guncle was born to the previous marriage at the time that mother died in childbirth, late 1884.

It seems that there were two birth certificates for the same child, and that the second is false, in effect meaning that my ggrandma adopted her husband's child from a previous marriage. Has anyone else had a similar experience in looking into their tree? How do people think they hid the fact that this child was in fact 2 years older than his new birth cert stated?