How can I find out who my grandfather was?

[toni*]

marrying in a registry office back then wasn't to do whether you were religious or not maybe it was cheaper 

[Lydart]

I have a similar situation ... my father was illegit., with no father named on his birth certificate.   BUT I do have his mothers name (she died when he was still a child) so following her ancestors backwards I got, by a stroke of sheer luck with an unusual surname and thus a one name study done by someone elese,  to 1550 !   I'm only sorry my father died long before I found all this ... he would have been so pleased to know he had a past !

So never give up ... there are always lines to follow, and sideways steps to make which can lead to interesting things !

[siledee]

Just a thought..any possibility that your mother was in fact the child of one of her elder "sisters"
Maybe that was the reason for such secrecy,
This happened in my family until we were old enough to do the math...only in this case your g'mother was young enough to make the story plausible.

[Tigsy]

Thanks, an interesting thought as the sisters would have been 17 and 19, and went on to marry very successful business men.

My grans name is on the birth certicate so that rules out that option but thanks for the suggestion.

[Redroger]

Personally I don't think it does rule out that option. Registration I believe has to take place within 42 days of the birth, so it is certainly possible that she was the child of one of her putative sisters.There are some in my mother's tree from the 19th century where children have been born very late  and appear in the census along with much older "siblings" as children of their grandparents?

[toni*]

My mothers maiden name was 'Ann' so no clues there.

that would be her forename i meant her middle name you can get some obscure names for example
Mary James O'Brein Smith the illegitimate daughter of Elizabeth Smith you would assume her father to be possibly James O'Brien!

[Josephine]

Tigsy, have you asked your mother's cousins or their children?

It isn't unusual for some family members to know these things even when the ones directly affected, such as your mother, don't know.  That happened in one branch of my family tree.

However, my great-grandfather was illegitimate and his mother refused to tell him who his father was and she, and anyone else who might have known, took that secret to the grave.

[Rena]

I'd definitely question all your grandmother's relatives - there were no secrets only perceived secrets.  for instance my older cousin started our fam. history when quite a lot of old rellies were alive and although he quizzed all blood relatives of our great grandfather b1854 he never did find out whereabouts in Germany he'd been born.   Decades later I find another relative who was the daughter of a very chatty woman who in her lifetime made it her business to know everyone else's business (thank the lord) had passed on not only his town of origin but the name of the father of an illigitimate child in the family.  As the child had died in 1913 when she was 2 yrs old there'd been no hint of her existence (until comparatively recently when bmd's became easier to obtain).    It's a pity you can't ask your mother if one aunty made more of a fuss of her than any other.

In my OH's tree there is an illigitimate child and she, plus her siblings, knew she was the product of a one sided love affair before her mother met her eventual husband. Whether the child's father would have married the mother would never be known because he was a naval officer and was lost at sea. 

[Caliandris]

I think you have to be understanding about the fact that at this particular time in history it was a very shameful thing to have a child out of wedlock.  I had always thought the stigma simply got worse and stronger as you went further back in time, but I don't think that was necessarily true, as I have found some very interesting comments on parish registers, which seemed quite accepting of children born out of wedlock, and yet others which were horrible.

Also, you always have to bear in mind that a child could have been the result of a rape.  It isn't a nice thing to consider, but it could be that your grandma was protecting your mother from something unpleasant.  In my family one of my grandmother's cousins didn't know that she was born as the result of rape, when I did.   My grandmother had told me all about it; my cousin's grandmother had told her nothing about it.  She never met her mother at all, and was brought up by her grandmother, with her grandmother's name.  

Sometimes in family history you have to accept that a brick wall is a brick wall.  It is possible that DNA testing may progress and tell us things we can't even dream about yet, so maybe it is "not yet" rather than never.

If it were me, I think I would be collecting as much as possible about the whole extended family - sisters and brothers, uncles and aunts, and trying to compile a time line to work out where granny was, how old the others in the family were, and what their movements were.  Even so, it's a long shot to be able to gather enough circumstantial evidence to even make an educated guess.


I hope the rest of your family tree is very rich and rewarding to make up for the gap.