My grandfather spoke of his brother going to Australia and of having lent him the money to run/fund a sheep farm in Queensland. To my 9 year old self he only admitted "all I know is there was a man with 2 sons and one went back to the place they all came from".
The years passed and eventually I told my father that with or without his help I was going to research the family tree after having had years of bitter arguments and a stoic refusal to assist. Eventually he confessed his abject fear of his father having been illegitimate to which I replied well you'll find out soon enough then. My grandfather was not illegitimate though he had an older step brother Edward who was and who was raised by my great grandfather.
Looking at the family I could see that my grandfather's brother George was missing from the scene and in the meantime after some six weeks of searching I was back to 1815. I spent around 3 months trying to fruitlessly discover when George had vanished and could not confirm whether it was pre or post WWI because the relevant census were not available in 1988 and it was difficult to differentiate between Georges in respect of working men obtaining the vote in 1911.
I had established contact with a much older female cousin and together we tried to piece together some details with my father still being very reluctant. He then candidly admitted to his mother having given birth to "another child" in 1916 and hinted that as his father had a reserved occupation he was able to return home from his service as a gunner in The Royal Garrison Artillery. Shortly after this bombshell landed my cousin discovered that our great grandfather had died in a Suffolk workhouse aged 86 in 1935. It was local to where my grandfather had been living in 1916 but almost 30 miles distant from his father's former Norfolk home.
My father grew up not knowing anything about his paternal grandfather assuming him to have died before he was born when in fact my father was 24. The key to this sorry saga was to lay hidden for another 25 years due to a variety of reasons. In 2011 I joined Ancestry but did not really have the time to do any research well not the kind I was used to but due to certain advances in indexing and laptop technology what previously took weeks can in some instances be done in hours. In 2014 I discovered that my grandfathers brother had married in Ireland in 1907 and died there in 1920.
So who on earth was this brother then? Why Edward of course! Well no actually he married a girl from 3 villages away and settled down there. Then I remembered an incident from circa 1968/69 an Australian namesake was enquiring in a cross county newspaper on behalf of his ailing father for details about his father's family. When I read out those details my father went ballistic and into a furious meltdown screaming "that was my mother's name".
Somewhere in the middle of this saga I had an idea which was fruitful if a little tedious as there were no shortcuts. I managed to take my paternal family line back to a marriage in 1768 but as I have no idea how old they were at marriage I can only surmise that its a tough nut to crack with both dying in 1784 and 1786 respectively with children born 1769-1781 *primeval scream*
Still the penny did not drop until I found another way to examine the details. Suppose my great grandfather moved from Norfolk to Suffolk in 1914 in order to accompany his daughter in law while her husband and her father were away in France together with almost all of the male population. At this time in 1914 my great grandfather would have been almost 66 years old having been born in 1848. Suppose for one of several reasons there was some sexual contact in this instant we can assume perhaps it was a drink induced seduction or worse it might have been rape? I have checked historical newspapers which would most likely have reported the incident as just an assault and found nothing. To be fair it could just as easily have been for mutual pleasure without any concern for the consequences given the uncertainty of the times.
So how did my thinking come to this point? My grandmother had reverted to her maiden name in order to give birth to the baby who was given the family name at birth. This to me indicates that my grandfather was not the father but that another family member was. For my grandfather this must have been the ultimate betrayal and yet he stayed married to his wife until her death some 14 years later and they had 2 more children.
Moving the family back into another part of Norfolk my grandfather seemingly had little or no contact with his one remaining Norfolk brother. While my great grandfather presumably either continued working until the pensionable age of 70 or went into the workhouse? As for the baby well technically he was my grandfather's step brother and it is possible that my grandfather bore him no ill will.
