RootsChat.Com

Thanks for all the replies & the information. Also for the newspaper clipping from bbart.

I totally agree that a lot of the tree owners on ancestry are just either name collectors or people who don't take the whole family research idea seriously. I've used ancestry on & off for over 12 years, sometimes with an annual sub but these days more often I buy a one month sub. I've found it an easy site to navigate & their record access is very good. The 'hints' system is handy but the trick is to weedle out the obvious non matches. 99% of my people have enough cross checked records to back up their authenticity & the other 1% I leave on the off chance that new records might appear in the future.



     

Thanks for the info & link, I'm off to have a look.

Thank you for your suggestion Viktoria, I shall look into his religious background. I'm amazed that even after over ten years of family research, I'm still learning new things.

Good afternoon from a very wet & windy Bristol. I think I may have found an illegitimate birth in my family tree & have a couple of general questions. The year is 1867 & the place is the West Country mill town of Trowbridge. The mother is Ann Lindsey, aged 20, who gave birth to a son, Frederick, in November of that year but there is no father's name on his birth certificate.
My first question is: If he was illegitimate, would there have been any stigma surrounding the mother or the child?

In 1888, when Frederick was 20 years old, he was baptized and the register shows his father's name as James, occupation of school teacher.

Frederick becomes a teacher at a local school he married in 1895 but there are blank spaces where his father's name & occupation on the marriage certificate.

My second question is: Could Frederick's mother, Ann, have invented a father's name & occupation for his baptism ceremony? Incidentally, Ann's father's name was James.