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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: nutkin on Sunday 29 August 04 00:28 BST (UK)
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I just was made aware that one of my ancestors was illegitmate and wonder how to find out more on her . I am rather excited becasue my tree has been hardy farm laborers.
Ann Whisker (also spelled Whiscar) had an illegitimate daughter Elizabeth Whisker bapt on May 6, 1798 in Welwick. Elizabeth went on to marry Jospeh Shields in 1826 in Kingston upon Hull. They lived a quite life where he worked as a warehouse manager.
I have Jospeh and Elizabeth Shields in the 1851 Census living in Hull, St. Mary's on High Street. AT the time a John Whisker was living with them who was the son of an Elizabeth Whisker b. in 1823 in Cottingham. I am betting just before the marriage to Joseph, Elizabeth had a son. SO wouldn't her current husband be mad to have her illegitamate child living with them?
I am crazy to find out more about the Whisker women. Was children out of wedlock common for the time? And I am suprised to have found baptism records for these children. It seems to be the family business to have children out of wedlock for the Whisker women. I think of them as suffragetts of the 18th century.
Any help on where to turn fo more info or how to find more on the Whiskers would be so helpful!!
-Nutkin ;D
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Hi Nutkin, :D
I am amazed by how many illigitimate children seem to have been about in the 19th century :o
I always thought it was a no-no but I think the terrible shame of being born out of wedlock must have arrived with the Victorian era.
My 2nd great grandmother had an illigimate son, at age 16, who died of Whooping Cough at just 8 weeks. I have tried hard to find out information as to who his father was.
I applied to Lincolnshire Archives for his Baptism and Burial details but the only extra information was that his mother was a spinster.
I also tried for Bastardy Bonds but had no luck - I just kept digging away and I believe I found the answer.
When I received a copy of the 1851 census which showed 2nd great gran aged 6 - there he was a few doors away aged 8 - the man she is living with on the 1871 census 10 years later! They have a 7 month old son with the same Christian name as the baby who died.
So, you never know your luck even when it all looks hopeless ;D
Try for the Baptism details - you might be luckier than me!
Good Luck
Aaron :D
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Hi Nutkin,
Like Aaron, I was amazed at how many children were born out of wedlock in centuries past!
Had you thought that perhaps the John Whisker living with them in 1851 WAS the son of Joseph, but they had not yet decided to marry? The parish records would only show her name as the mother, even though she might know who the father was, it wouldn't be registered.
I have only one case, where the mother has had the illigetimate daughter baptised in her name with the father being mentioned & that's in 1841 and the daughter uses her mother's surname throughout her life.
Jane
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In the PR's I found such things as comments by the vicar or parish clerk, 'Jane, bastard daughter of Mary ******,a notorius woman of easy virtue,baptised this day' and 'Thomas ****** buried this day,married three times, 18 children legit. and 7 children illegit. a drunkkard[sic] whoremaster and gambeller[sic]aged 84 a pauper,may the Lord have mercy on his wicked soule.
Hey Jane :D
Remember this one which was poster by Tom Gaunt?
What a vicar!!! ;D ;D
Aaron
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Nutkin,
Have you seen the actual register entry? In some parishes the vicar would add details such as 'father reputed to be John Smith'.
Also if the mother was 'on the parish' I think there would have been an attempt to identify the father - a bit like the Child Support Agency nowadays. Worth checking with the local records office, who may still have the papers.
Hope this helps,
Pete
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My 3 x G Grandpa had 11 known illegitimate children with one lady, they were all baptised but confusingly some took his surname the others hers.. :-\
I will have a look at the Parish Reg's when I get a chance, I'd love to know if the Vicar had any comment to make
Suey
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Hi
My grandmother never married my grandfather
She couldn't - he was already married with 11 children - at the same time giving my grandmother 3 known children - then he left them both 1906 and dissappeared.
This made my father a 'bastard' child, which means I am 'a son of a bastard' - wife said she knew that all the time. :-X
Found grandads death in 1944 - amongst other things on his death certificate were the words 'Cancer of the p e n i s' - now - is that poetic justice or what?
(Had to write it like that to get it past the automatic censor)
Chris in 1066Land
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Bastards, now there's a thought. It wasn't such a big no no until the victorian era when moral values changed. Before that period it was very common especially where the master of some house got his servants pregnant.
How to find out more? As already mentioned some PR's hold interesting anecdotes but this isn't common it depends on the vicar or more likely the clerks. Then there are Bastardy bonds but these were not always carried through. Also the overseer's of the poor accounts may hold some interesting facts.
Off the top of my head One father of an illigit child was made to pay to the overseer of the Poor £2 5s for the cost of this childs upkeep whilst he was absent and he was to pay until the child was no longer a burden on the parish ( usually when he became of age to wrok) 2 shillings per week. Surprisingly the mother was made to pay 1s a week.
It also lists whether the father named had any objections to the child being his blood.
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The woman who looked at the original parish record did not see any notes other than Elizabeth Whisker illegit daughter of Ann Whisker. Additionally, The man whose name was John Whisker was listed as a border in the house in 1851. however, he worked with his mother's husband in the same place. I am hoping to get a hold of the 1841 Census to see if he is there.
Can I ask a rather dense question? What are bastardy bonds? I have not heard of them.
I thank you all for giving me sopme great ideas. I never thought of how 21st century morals and ideas would differ from teh early 19thc. You have all opened my eyes.
One thing I have to find out is someone down the Whisker line must have been a male to sire all these Whisker woman who had children out of wedlock!
-Nutkin :D
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Here you go, Nutkin - all you ever wanted to know about Bastardy Bonds but were afraid to ask! ;D
www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/LIN/poorbastard.html
Enjoy
Aaron ;)
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??? Should we use that word on here ???
should we use that word on here ???????????? ??? ??? :o
;D
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That word
Well; it is a very important word in Family History
And anyway, the automatic censor does not cut in and change it to 'thingy'
So, got to be ok
And as a son of one - its GOT to be alright ;D
Chris in 1066Land
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;D right thats ok then !!! ;D
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Wow! I learned a lot on Bastardy laws. However, how would I find them in Yorkshire? The persons in question were from Welwick and Ottrtingham. These are small towns.
Would it possible that the local villages would have some record of the family. I have just placed an order for parish records with the East Yorkshire Family History Society but bastardy bond publications do not seem to be offered.
By the way, I forgot to mention that Elizabeth had 2 sons in Ottringham before she married Joseph SHields.
I do apologize if the term "bastard" offends anyone. This does seem to be the term used in old records.
-Kristin (aka Nutkin) :)
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Actually Bastard isn't used in earlier PR's but is in Victorian ones so go figure that out. The most common I have come across is Spurrious. I am at present transcribing a Doncaster Parish baptisms ( wont say more on this yet) and the vicars use the term Single Woman.
Anyone who is offended by the word bastard shouldnt be doing genealogy because its there and a legitimate word
rob
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Hi again Nutkin,
if I am correct and Welwick is East Riding ( dumb Aussie here! ;D ) you might have some luck at this site-
www.eastriding.gov.uk/libraries/archives/archives.html
Aaron
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Thanks for the tid-bit. I will have to contact them to do some overseas work. I live in the US and learning how the UK goverment is set up to find records has been a steep learning curve for an impatient genealogist. ;D
-Kristin
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I know how you feel Kristin - being in Australia made things a bit hard for me too - but this is a great site and I have found out heaps since joining.
Don't be afraid to ask questions as everyone is friendly and helpful.
Good Huntin'
Aaron ;D
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wops ;D im not worried just thoght some one else might be !!!!!!!!!!!!
;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
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My great great great grandmother Fanny Layton Culling had at least four illegitimate children, all apparently by the same man. I did think it was Walter J Green, but it seems more likely it was his older brother Josiah, whose existence only turned up recently.
Apparently, the Victorian custom with illegitimate children was to give them their father's surname as a given name. So Fanny's children were:
Josiah Green Culling
James Green Culling
Charles Winchester Green Culling
Ada Anne Green Culling
I gather that at least with the youngest two, they were taken in, possibly after Fanny's death in 1867, by their father's sister Martha, who'd just married for the second time - she and her husband William Giesen adopted Charles as their son - and Mrs Ann Green, a well off widow, took on Ada and brought her up from a very little girl until Ada's suicide in 1881.
I really hope eventually I can track down Josiah and James, as well as their father Josiah Green. I am assuming he didn't marry Fanny because he was already married to someone else - either that or it was because she was of lower social status and either he or the family wouldn't countenance it.
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I have been trying to find the parents of a certain Jane (surname unknown), born 1803. I have just obtained a copy of the Parish records where for 1803 there were 3 Janes baptised, 1 of which had BASE noted next to the name. The surname given was Williams (written in capi-tals) with Morris next to it in brackets. The names of both mother and father were given, mother being Elizabeth Williams, father being John Morris.
No marriage is recorded for this pair not previously (obviously) and not subsequently either, and there are also no further children recorded. Luckily for me though, with the fathers name being entered, and the name John Morris being given to the eldest son for the next 3 generati-ons, is confirmation enough for me that I have the right one.
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Thought I would add my three ha'pence worth. I've just finished transcribing the parish baptism records from 1566 to date and there are some decided trends, not all of which have already been raised in this thread.
From the late 1600s to mid 1700s, the father's name was recorded on the register. Even if in one case the parish clerk felt the need to add 'or so she sayeth'. After that the child often had a different name to its mother - perhaps an indication of who might have been the father without his being named. Later still, the child would tend to have a middle name that looks suspiciously like a surname.
I would estimate the number of illegitmate births as being pretty constant at about 5-10% in my rural Cambs village. I don't know how typical this was. Multiple illegimate births to the same mother are extremely rare, although one woman in the 1700s had three.
The comments from the clerk can be most illuminating. I particularly liked the comments against the funeral of a girl who was both shot and stabbed by her fiance. It said that he was captured and taken to Cambridge to be executed which was entirely appropriate because he had awful smallpox scars. Quite properly, being scarred by smallpox was seen as being worse than murdering someone.
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Mrs Lizzie - Your comments are very interesting, I have a family where the boys all have the middle name Bridger, think I will have to have a closer look at them, I was'nt able to find a marriage for their mother and 'father'. Seems likely after reading your post that they wer'nt his. Also the surname did not tie up with either set of Grandparents.
I seem to have more than my fare share of unwed mothers, I spose there was'nt much else to do on the dark nights in rural Sussex ;D
Suey
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I posted a link yesterday that had analysis for 1831 in Scotland
http://www.rootschat.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=10542.0
and the top percentage was 8% funnily this was in Kirkcudbright & Dumfriesshire where all my lot are from!
Anyway a side issue I noticed last night whilst transcribing the Scots/Carruthers/Farish from the Annan OPR is that a child was normally baptised within a month of their birth but illegitimate children were nearly always a year plus later. No idea why? Does anyone else? Was this the parish trying to find the father?
Pam
;D
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Hi
No point in trying to hide the fact of illegitimate children from this census enumerator in 1851, there are at least 7 other examples of being named and shamed in the same small village.
peterbennett
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Immagine having that listed as your occuaption?!
I have noticed in the Census that alot of older persons having a grandchild in their houshold. I am curious how common this was and if the child was potentially illegit? I have a 70 year old set of parents in Hull having a 2 year old either daughter or grandaughter but no other housholders which seems odd. I
guess parents could have died or child is a miracle birth for a 68 year old woman. However, not the fist time I cam accross and wondered if parents raised illegit grandchildre?
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Hi
Grandparents raising a grandchild was not uncommen in fact it was very common in the 1800 & early 1900's and nothing to do with being legit or not, but purely a matter of economics and caring for the elderly, I have one ancester who spent the first 25 years of her life living with gran while her mum was only in the next street.
peterbennett
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HI,
I have several instances where the grandchild is with the grandparents for several census, although the birth parents (married) are living in the same street, maybe because of economics or perhaps an overcrowding issue?
A
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In my never-ending search for Hedg(e)cocks (One-name-Study) I came across Ann born Maldon 1850, in the 1881 census as unmarried Head of the house, age 31, to five Hedgcocks aged between 2 and 12. First thought was step-sister, something along those lines.
The 1891 census has her as Single, Mother of Children, and a further 4 children!! Head of the house is one William White, the Captain of a Barge. Ann's 3rd son is a cook on a Barge. Same Barge??? Is he the one???
1901 sees her widowed and a dressmaker with her own account - she's had no occupation before (I'm not surprised with all those children - she had 11 in the end!) And she's back to being the Head of the Household.
I've got one child's birth certificate but there's nothing for the father - I suspect this will be the same on any of the birth or marriage certs. She's stayed in the same area all her life, and I've come to the conclusion she must have loved this man, whoever he was. It's such a shame I'm not ever likely to find out.
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This is an old thread from 14 - 15 years ago so I am not sure anyone is still following this?
I have a few points to share but no specific ones about the specific family as posted by "Nutkin".
ILLEGITIMATE CHILDREN:
I have a file with pdf transcripts from 1500's - about 1830 for BMD of Appleby Magna, Leicestershire, England. I estimate around 5% - 10% of births recorded in 1700's and 1800's were illegitimate.
Most commonly records give mother's name and child's name described as the bastard (S) = son OR (D) = daughter.
Sometimes the father is named with the mother and a boy may be described as "the baseborn" (S) of Fredrick Blogs.
USING ANOTHER FAMILY NAME AS A 2ND PRE-NAME:
The use of a family name used as a 2nd pre-name was not exclusive to illegitimate children. For example my gg grandfather William Thurman (1810 - 1882) married twice.
With his first wife Mary Neale they had 3 children and they all took the name Neale as a second pre-name. Example John was named John Neale Thurman. A girl and another son also took Neale as a second name.
In 1851 William was a widower and on Census day he had a young lady visitor called Ester with a new born baby. In Feb 1852 William married the "visitor" Ester but the child always lived with Ester's mother. A year later in 1853 they got round to baptizing their daughter and she was officially named Sarah Mary Stanley Thurman (Stanley being the family name of Ester's father). Sara continued to live with her grandmother even though William and Ester went on to have another 8 children. The 8 younger siblings of Sara all lived with William & Ester.
Was this due to shame and stigma that she was born out of wedlock or did Sara and grandmother just love each other so much that they could not be parted; who knows?
POLITE OR INAPPROPRIATE TERMINOLOGY:
Until more politically correct times, records called a spade a shovel and there was no sensitivity about using the term "Bastard". Furthermore, even as recently as 1911 the UK census records have columns on the census forms for recording "Lunatics & Imbeciles".
I guess family members falling into these categories would be shamefully hidden away from sight in the attic or the coal cellar.
Andy_T
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My 4 times great grandfather was born in 1816 - his baptism on 11th August was very helpful
'Born May 1st. GEORGE, natural son of Thomas Williams, alias William Thomas and Ann Fido of Marshfield, Carpenter. Sworn to him at the Cross Hands.'
Always wonder if the father used both names or if his mother was 'it's Thomas Williams or William Thomas, I can't really remember which way round his names go'
George names William Thomas on his first marriage certificate, but Thomas Fido on the second and third - not sure if that is a sign of the times changing in the 20odd years between marriages 1 and 2 or because the first one was where he was born and presumably everyone knew the truth and he'd moved to a nearby city with his first wife so he could conceal it? or because his social standing had risen more so he wanted to appear legit? or even just the vicar assuming that his father had the same surname
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There is also one on my husband's side where I'm fairly convinced it is her subsequent husband's child - approx 7 months before the birth (14 Feb 1896) he gets sent to India with the army, the little girl is just registered with her mother's details in the Novemeber, as soon as he gets back they marry (Oct 1897) and the daughter is then baptised (with mothers maiden name as her second middle name) dies shortly after that - her death is registered with both surnames
In the 1911 census with children born alive to the marriage she is included in those numbers as born alive to the marriage but died
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The use of a surname as middle name does not always apply to the naming of illegitimate children. It can be to do with inheritance. I have two examples of this, both of whom added the extra surname in order to inherit wealth, however they both added the name as adults and neither was illegitimate. I do also have one example of the extra surname given at baptism. Irritatingly I've never been able to trace the real father of this one.
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Gillg raises another aspect about using another surname as a 2nd / middle name:
Quote: "It can be to do with inheritance".
This leads me to another roots post from 2004 / 2005 about landowners Coleman family and a John Thurman at Long Clawson, Leics.
This discussion is primarily about the Coleman family at Long Clawson but their next door neibour, John Thurman was also a huge landowner with farms in Leicestershire and parts of Warwickshire.
Thurman lived and died a batchelor and lived well into his 90's.
Weird thing is that he left a bit of money to children of his deceased Thurman nephews and nieces and left most of his properties and land to the Coleman family.
One of the farms he bequeathed in his 1845 will to his godson, John Thurwan Coleman "Who was to take the name THURMAN".
Gentleman John Thurman passed away in 1849 and in that year John Thurwan Coleman was 11 years old. He did change his middle name to Thurman (from Thurwan) and died age 29.
Here is the link to that Coleman / Thurman thread
https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=24991.msg6661751#msg6661751
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The use of a surname as middle name does not always apply to the naming of illegitimate children. It can be to do with inheritance.
Quite the reverse. I think it became a fashion in the early 1800s, as that is when it starts to appear regularly in baptism records. One of my g-g-grandfathers used most of his earlier family surnames on his first five children - if he had not done that, I would have been unable to follow the lines further, especially beyond a previous baptism under a mis-spelt name.
Another example was the family of John Gregory Jones, one of the founders of the Liverpool Collegiate Institution. All his nine offspring had distinctive, even odd, middle names, but that means they can be traced among all the other Joneses in Liverpool. Maybe they were the ones all the rest were trying to keep up with ;D
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Gillg and Andrew Tarr are both right to a point and it’s also true that some illegitimate children received their father’s family name as a middle name. My gg grandfather gave his first wife’s family name to their 3 children in the 1840’s.
After he became a widower, he had 9 more children with a younger woman and the first born in 1851 was born out of wedlock and she received her maternal grandfather’s family name as a middle name. In 1852 they married and in Feb 1853 they got around to a baptism and she was named Sarah Anne Stanley Thurman (Stanley being her mother’s family name).
As in the case of bachelor and “Gentleman” John Thurman he left a house and a farm to his godson on the condition his name was to change to Thurman.
Andy_T
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Gillg and Andrew Tarr are both right to a point and it’s also true that some illegitimate children received their father’s family name as a middle name. My gg grandfather gave his first wife’s family name to their 3 children in the 1840’s.
But that proves very little, if the current fashion was to use a 'family' middle name. It may have added respectability to an otherwise naughty birth; it may have assisted with later inheritances; but that doesn't prove an original intention.
It certainly helps our later researches though.
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Gillg and Andrew Tarr are both right to a point and it’s also true that some illegitimate children received their father’s family name as a middle name. My gg grandfather gave his first wife’s family name to their 3 children in the 1840’s.
But that proves very little, if the current fashion was to use a 'family' middle name. It may have added respectability to an otherwise naughty birth; it may have assisted with later inheritances; but that doesn't prove an original intention.
It certainly helps our later researches though.
This was the case with an ancestor from rural Lincolnshire, where the son later took the surname of the man her father had married a year or so after his birth as a middle name. But the baptism was just under the mother's maiden name with no father listed. Whether he was actually the father, it may be lost in the mists of (DNA) time. If he was the father, I wonder even then if the rural conservative society would have permitted him to use his father's name. On the other hand, with some London ancestors, a widow shacked up with a new man and had five children by him, all baptised as if legitimate at one London church, but they didn't bother getting married until they were finished, half way across the city! The children all used the father's surname with no hint at illegitimacy throughout their lives.