RootsChat.Com

When an ancestor is a single mother

I use a few techniques to identify possible surname of birth father

If the mother was a domestic servant or a lodger in the years preceding the birth .
I do a name search in DNA  search matches function
  of the employers & other staff

I also do a name search of the 4 great grandfathers named on trees of top matches .

This didn't work for my cousin's top match as it turns out that their great grandmother was also a single mother domestic servant so absolutely no surnames in common
So for a long time I had the bio father on the tree as "John from Yorkshire"
Eventually calculated the surname of another single mothers whose descendants were more distant . Her son was not called John but DNA links to him and his uncles suggested that was correct man

Now I'm calculating who was "John"s birth father .
There are clusters of matches  linking to a couple of candidates but locations are totally wrong .
I'm wondering if a stonemason from Liverpool would travel to Yorkshire for work .

I also do name searches on any witnesses at siblings weddings in years near the birth .
I've recently found a connection to one of the surname clusters by doing this .

Inspired by recent
" thinking outside the box" stories

Does anyone else do this ?

Not something I've looked at much before .

So a few questions are coming up
& I'm finding it hard to find court transcripts & articles about the case .

First question is about Aliases : is there any convention about which name is given first

I think it's the one arrested under and previous names go back in time so the last one listed most likely to be the original name .


I

Can anyone read this

it' could be  Geo short for George

But what is surname

so far no success in finding a grave for Charlotte BENJAMIN
died in epsom hospital surrey 29 jan 1954 # sorry 1956

home address was 12 dynham road west hampstead

i didnt send for her will because assumed she would have left everything to her only son 
having outlived her only sibling

 could she have stipulated a preferred burial place

her husband had  died many years before +they were estranged