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« on: Thursday 12 November 20 12:47 GMT (UK) »
Hi all - I have a friend who I got to talking with about family history. I have some ancestors with his surname, I'll say it's Handley, and both families are of English origin, so I asked him if I could build out his tree and see if I could find a common ancestor. He agreed and I did that.
I didn't find common ancestors, so I set it aside and we sort of lost touch for about 2-3 years after that. We recently re-connected and I pulled up his tree again. This time I noticed that his grandmother, we'll call her Celia Bellows, was only 15 when she had his father (in 1931) and she was unmarried at the time. She married three yrs later. Her son has her husband's name, Handley.
I thought it was unlikely that she had an illegitimate child, then married the father three yrs later. I suspected that Mr Handley adopted her son, or else they just changed his name to Handley. I launched a search for Handley Jr's birth record, this is my friend's father, let's say his name is Jonah Handley. Nothing came up under that name in the city where he was born. However, I did find a child born 1931 named Jonah Bellows, and Bellows was the mother's maiden name. Unfortunately it was just a birth index record, so it didn't give month and day of birth or any parents' names. But, if Jonah Handley had been born that year as well, it would have been right there in that same birth index and it wasn't.
I picked the name Jonah because it is an unusual name, and the name of my friend's Dad is also fairly uncommon. On a whim, I wondered if she had named her son's first name after the bio Dad. I did a search for anyone named Jonah, age within 5 yrs of the Mom's birth year, who lived in that city in 1930. I found one Jonah Timms, born same year as the Mom and living only about a mile from her home location in the 1930 census. Could this be the bio Dad?
I have not said anything to my friend about this. I wasn't sure if he knew about his grandmother having his Dad out of wedlock at age 15 or not, so I didn't mention it. Just today we were talking and he said "well, you know, I'm half English on the Handley side". So, he believes he's a bio Handley, which he may be, if the man his grandmother Bellows married was the father of the child she had three yrs prior. I just find that unlikely. He may be a Timms!
My question is, am I right not to say anything to my friend about this? I know that if it were me, I'd want to be told, but that's me. Some people definitely would NOT want to be told. I thought about cajoling him into doing a dna test, because then the truth would come out without me having to say anything, but he probably wouldn't be interested in doing that.
I don't believe I'd be able to prove my theory without dna confirmation, because 1930's is too recent for me to be able to acquire a birth certificate or any adoption or name change court records without being a family member. He could probably get that info, but I can't. Since I don't know for sure, I think I should keep it to myself for now. But something niggles at me, because as I said, if it was me, I'd want to know that there was this question there.
What would you want if you were my friend? What would you do if you were me?
Kat