Genealogy Chat

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.

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

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

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'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.

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,

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

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.

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.

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.