Genealogy Chat

Thanks, everyone. I think we'll just have to leave it at that. There's never going to be any documentary evidence, so we''l just have to go with family legend.

The Father's name on the marriage certificate is no proof whatsoever, unfortunately.

It is just either who she believes, in good faith, is her actual father, or who she claims to be her father to maintain respectability.

The father's name on Grannie's marriage certificate is that of the man who married her mother, the man who she believed to be her father. This man later married again and a descendant of the son from that second marriage tells me that his great-aunt remembers my grandmother because they shared the same father/grandfather.

My grandmother had no other siblings, and I have so far been unable to find her baptism, having looked on the Lancsopc site at all the local churches.

The father's name on Grannie's marriage certificate is that of the man who married her mother, the man who she believed to be her father. This man later married again and a descendant of the son from that second marriage tells me that his great-aunt remembers my grandmother because they shared the same father/grandfather.

My grandmother had no other siblings, and I have so far been unable to find her baptism, having looked on the Lancsopc site at all the local churches.

Gillian,

Taking SC's comment re: baptism. Have you researched that? Not all Church records that are available are available online.

Gillian,

No father name on your grandmother's birth certificate. But what about her subsequent marriage certificate? What name is showing for father?

Also, did your grandmother have siblings? If so, and as your great grandmother was alive for four years after your grandmother's birth, were any of them also born prior to the marriage?

Not quite the proof that SC mentions, but could be a guide.

Gillian

I'm sorry to say that your contact is quite correct


If the child was born and then a marriage occurred 2 years later ................. there is absolutely no guarantee that the new husband was the father of the child UNLESS you can find documentary proof of it.

Such proof would be in the form of, for example ................ a notation in the baptism record that so-and-so was the child's father; the addition of the name on the child's birth certificate; and, possibly to a little lesser extent, the name added in the family bible or a letter written at the time of the birth.

If all you have is family talk, then it is not proof.


The man married the child's mother and so became the child's stepfather, and he was in that position for the 2 years before his wife died.

The fact that he and his family continued to raise the child after the death of the mother is only an acknowledgment of the accepted status of stepdaughter NOT of his being the true birth father.

It is also an example of their generosity .......... they could very well have sent the child to her mother's family or to an orphanage


I don't think any of us would accept that as PROOF of him being the birth father ................. all we would do is put his name in a note as "putative father"



I don't know when this happened ................ but laws governing adoptions were not enacted until mid-1927.

Before that adoptions were ad hoc, with little or no documentation ...................... so a man marrying a woman who already had a child (or children) would just take them under his wing ................ or not, as happened in some cases.



All you can do is accept this man as a generous person who took on a child born to the woman he wanted to marry.

I am now in contact with the person who entered my parents on their tree and am presently in a kind of dispute with him. He says that because my grandmother's mother didn't marry until 2 years after Grannie was born, we can't be certain that the man she was brought up to believe was her father actually was her father, since his name doesn't appear on the birth certificate. Sadly Grannie's mother died 2 years after the marriage and she was brought up by the man both she and I believe to be her father and his family. Would they have done that if he was actually not her father after all?

I know where this is coming from, however. The contact has a very serious one name study and obviously wants official proof in the form of certificates, etc., for everything, but I'm sticking with family legend.

Thanks, everyone.

Gill

Gillian, I know how frustrating this can be. I have same issue on Ancestry. The person I contacted is the only one that I have seen to be researching the same family as me, despite loads of other people researching families with same name from the same village. I first contacted him in February, didn't hear back, so tried another couple of messages. Then got a reply saying, tell me who it is that you want details of and I will check. Now we are in June and I'm none the wiser even thought I have had a few replies, he is not forthcoming with any information. I still have hardly any info on my grandmother's family.

Val

If the message appears in your 'Sent Messages' folder then you have sent it.

Gillian, if there's nothing next to the message then it has been read. Until someone has opened the message a little green envelope will show to the left of it in your Sent Messages folder until it has been read.

Actually there is no "message sent" or "message opened" by my message, just a blank! (Yes, I did press "Send") Don't know what the significance of that is, but it's not so important now, because I know I can contact him through his one name study site. He has over 22,000 names on it, so will be kept busy updating and responding to queries, I guess.

thanks again, folks. :-)

It is not necessary to be a paying member to put a tree on GR.

Has your message been opened?

Gillian - how many of 'your' family members have been added.

I know in my own research, I will add in a Spouse and any children to my own family, but if a more distant relative, that will be it. No more research.

This could be the case here. A member of your family marrying in and being added to the tree and that could be the sum total of their research into 'your' family.

Thanks everyone for your comments. Still no reply from the poster, but in a roundabout way I have discovered that he is researching my grandmother's family. I would assume that he is a paid up member as he has so recently added these names, even if like me he is only a basic member.

Still hoping for a response, though. :-)

just as a point of interest .............................


ancestry automatically changes ALL information on a person added to your tree to PRIVATE if the person has been born in the last 100 years and there is no death date.



so it is not only GR that has this requirement

DC

Not really an answer to my question. The persons are 'living' even though you set them as dead.

Irrespective of any GR requirements I tend to agree with Hugh. BMD's are in the public domain.

If you intend to give access to your tree then you protect the data relating to your living relatives by setting the flag that makes them 'hidden'.

If you find that another member appears to have input some of 'your' living relatives, it may well be that those names are also living relatives to that other member.

Hugh - Shirley is right in that it is a Genes Reunited requirement that you do not add living persons to your tree on Genes Reunited without their permission:

From the FAQ re Family tree :

"Living relatives

Members must have permission to add the names of any living relations to their tree.

If a member has added the names of living members of your family to their tree then we can ask them to remove them. Please send a full list of any living names and their years of birth that have been added without permission to the Genes Reunited support team.

It would also really help the support team if you could send in full details of the person who has added these names. When you see your own name or your family names in the search results, you can click on the link to send the tree owner a message. On the next page you'll see their membership number. Please include this name and number in your email to us.

We will then contact the member who added them on your behalf."

The date I was thinking of was 29th Feb!

Any name can be added to your tree ,living or otherwise,,,,,,

the clause is-------you must refrain from adding personal information that can lead to identification of (a) living person/ (b)people ,,,,,,,,,,,,a name & yob isnt information that identify a person and is excluded from privacy or data protection.