A bit shocked, Confused...and a bit hurt

[Guy Etchells]

I think you need to check what you have as you seem very confused.

The dates you give suggest your grandfather died as soon as he went to prison
Went to prison August 1927
Died when grandfather was 4 months (April 1927 + 4 months = August 1927).

The dates also show that the man who went to prison could certainly be the father of the child born in December 1927 (Dec 1927 - August 1927 = 4 months).

I think there is a high possibility that some dates have been muddled along the way.
Cheers
Guy

[MurphysLaw]

Hi guys -

I think some of you have mis understood me- i am in NO WAY judging my Ggrandmother so I am sorry if you all feel that way but that was not my intention - I am merely asking if people have experienced this feeling when searching for ancestors who are dead and we have no real feel of who they were. I just feel odd that i am feeling so close to her yet i do not know her.....im not saying she was bad or an angel - im just trying to see both sides and work out what seems more plausible-

For those of you who think I am confused this is what I have got

I have found that this lady had one child with another man and this child was raised as my great grandads 'son' although he wasnt. The man is on the childs birth cert that i gained through purchase at local BMD registry offices -as is the childs mothers maiden name.

I do not know what happened to the man.

She then had 2 children by my great grand father. One being my grandfather- born in April 1927. Both his and his sisters certs show the fathers name- who was the man in prison.
This man died in prison (yes i do know why - but i dont want to enter into because its very personal to the family) in Aug of '27.

So my grandad being born in April of 1927 would mean that my grandad was 4 months old when his dad died -

after my Ggrandfathers  death the records i have show that his wife went on to have a baby in Dec of 1927 -  which suggests that she would have had to have fallen pregnant virtully as soon as my grandad was born.....
I know a lot of you are poo-pooing this idea and believe me I have found this odd too - and yes there is a possibility of my ggrandfather being the childs father however these are the docs that i have and I can only say what is infront of my eyes.... the cert shows a different mans name on this babies cert.

after this child is born she has another 3 with the same man - the same father is listed on all 4 of the childrens certs....

she dosest marry this man until some 35 years later -
he had a wife you see ( i have the marriage docs for that marriage - he also had children in this marriage) rather than divorce her he waited till she died I also have the docs for his first wifes death)

I recently was given a family tree doc that has been in the family for some years - I have gained most of my work from this and each piece has so far fitted with docs i have already got. This tree was written out by a family member in their 80s and from what I have been told has been in a box for some years doing nothing until i mentioned i was doing this.....It has now been given to me and i am working with/from it. I have also had contact with a member of the family that my ggreat nan had after my ggradfathers death - so this is the 'extended' family - this man also has the same detailing as me on his tree...

All i was saying is that i feel odd about it, I dont know what to make of it and i was hoping some of you would be able to understand where i was coming from in trying to convey a feeling about something that is so close to the family yet is so far... its just odd that it can make you feel like that and get your mind racing....

I do not think I need a change of hobby as some people may think- now that some of the members of the board have also said that they have felt the same on discovering a huge skeleton within their families, i now know as a newbie who has never done this before, its normal to feel so connected to a distant link and to experience the emotion that goes with it.


Thanks for all your help.

Any further comments please PM me and i can give you more detail if i have confused any one

[Marmalady]

ahh, the fact that she names another man as father to the child born in dec 1927 does make things clearer (you had omitted this info in your earlier posts)

There is always the liklihood of surprising events turning up - in my own family (at around the same time as yours) i have abandonment, bigamous marriage, more abandonment and finally a marriage legalising his third family after the death of the first wife.

There is no reason to feel hurt by these relevations - they are history - just keep an open mind about the reasons for peoples actions

[LizzieW]

I think the reason MurphysLaw is shocked and confused - I would stay stunned - is that this is all fairly recent history and his grandfather's family history at that. 

I'm less surprised/upset when I find things out about my grandparent's history as they were born in the late 1800s, so it all seems so much further away, even to an oldie like me.

Lizzie

[MurphysLaw]

I think the reason MurphysLaw is shocked and confused - I would stay stunned - is that this is all fairly recent history and his grandfather's family history at that. 

I'm less surprised/upset when I find things out about my grandparent's history as they were born in the late 1800s, so it all seems so much further away, even to an oldie like me.

Lizzie

Thanks Lizze -

You hit the nail on the head.... its recent and so is more of a shock

Thanks for the help on conveying the feeling 

[Jeuel]

Hi

You have some information, but you've interpreted it - and your interpretation may or may not be correct.  She may not have "dumped" her children, maybe the grandparents offered to help her as she had just lost her husband (and presumably any means of support) and had a new baby to look after.  You say she must have got pregnant straight away but the 2nd baby might have been a bit premature.  We don't have all the facts - we probably never will.

Family history records are often sad/bad - prison records, asylum records etc.  The "good" records, like Valentines' cards, love letters etc often don't survive.

For all you know her husband might have been vile to her.  We don't know.  We like to think that marriages are all love matches, but I think many of them were pragmatic, men marrying to have someone to cook/have babies and the women marrying to gain respectability and a roof over their heads.

[Charlesworth]

Regardless of what happened in your family's past, the emotions are completely understandable.  When I first started doing my family research I was blown away by poverty, young parents dying and leaving young children, young men killed in action, deaths in the workhouse.  And then when a friend mentioned her g uncle who had died in WWI, and that his last letter home was him saying that he was really looking forward to eating the chocolate cake his sister was sending him, I spent a whole afternoon bawling my eyes out.  I was just so overwhelmed at all these lives that had gone before, and how much suffering there had been.

Now I don't bawl my eyes out at what I find, but each person I research comes alive for me - as I think it does for most people.  So yes, it's perfectly normal to feel so emotional for somebody who lived so long ago.

 

[Hanford]

So far there's only been one or two things that have made me a tad emotional, the main one being my great great grandfather and his womanising...

His first wife, who he had 3 children with,  was left disfigured after a house fire so he then started to have an affair with my great great grandmother, who was unaware he was already married and divorced wife no.1....
After spending about 7 years with my great great grandmother and having 3 more children,  he moved another woman into the house and had an affair with her, having 5 more children with her. They had the two top floors of the house, and my family had the basement 

My great gran always said her mother died of a broken heart, on her gravestone is his surname which for some reason just saddens me as to add insult to her, my great great grandfather moved his new family into the farmhouse that had been in her family over 200 years 

Luckily, my great gran lived long enough to tell me these sort of family stories, there's only so much you can learn from a record 

[cuthie]

Hope you are feeling a bit less shocked by all this.  It is sometimes hard to accept that close members of ones family could behave in a way that you would perhaps not expect them to.

Just a thought about the baby born in December.  Is it possible that this could have been a premature birth?  If so, it would give a little bit more of an interval between the two births.

Cuthie