Mystery about Great Great Grandfather

[mikegh1109]

Many thanks to you all, a bit overwhelmed by such helpful and friendly support.  I hadn't thought of William "making up" a father's name but a quick google about the shame of illegitimacy in those days helps explain why he might.  I'll follow up on censuses and baptism suggestions.  I think I've been too focused on finding (unsuccessfully) the mysterious George who might not even exist I suppose .

Josey - yes, I found William with the Pegg family and thought it a bit odd that in two consecutive censuses a child was not living with his parent(s).  But maybe Hannah couldn't afford to keep him which would be consistent with the illegitimacy possibility.  Anyway, this has been a great help and has opened up new avenues to research.

Happy New Year to you all.

[josey]

If Hannah Hollis was Hannah Pegg she may not even have told her husband that she had had a child before she married him so her parents didn't claim William on the census as a grandson, but put him as a visitor then lodger.  Herbert Brookes was born in Hilton - this was the next village but he may not have known Hannah in 1853.

However, a local vicar would not have let Hannah Pegg call herself Hannah Hollis for the baptism unless he thought she had married, but again she could have said she had married out of the parish & had become a widow very soon.

[jennifer c]

Hannah and Herbert Are not living together by 1871, herbert is living with Sarah and another daughter Hannah.

Jennifer

[mikegh1109]

Again, thanks for the baptism information and the thought that Hannah Pegg might have been William's mother by a George Hollis.  That's another possibility I need to explore. But in that case wouldn't Hannah Pegg have recorded her name as Hannah Pegg on William's birth certificate, instead of which it's recorded as Hannah Hollis? Would it have been legal for her to use the father's surname as her own if she wasn't married to him?

[avm228]

It’s not unlawful to use any name in England if you’re not using it for fraud etc.  In family history in any case it’s always much less about legal technicalities and much more about human behaviour, and in particular the need to appear respectable.  People often pretended to be married or widowed when they were not, if it saved their blushes about a child born out of wedlock.  This was (obviously) easier to get away with in a place where one was unknown, and harder in one’s home parish.

We don’t yet have any clear evidence that Hannah Pegg was the mother, just a circumstantial finding that the child appears with her family.  Unfortunately I can’t see anything about a paternity claim in relation to William’s birth in online newspapers - sometimes this is how we can clinch these cases.

[Wendy2305]

Another possibility is William could have been boarded out to the Peggs and raised by them they maybe no relation to his birth mum and just a coincidence the Pegg's have a daughter Hannah
I think  it would be unlikely a 16/17 year old would be able to convince the local vicar she had been married and widowed to be able to christen her son under Hollis

[Mabel Bagshawe]

The baptism register entry image is on Ancestry.  There's a big B next to the entry, as there is later on the page for another "mother only" baptism

[avm228]

The baptism register entry image is on Ancestry.  There's a big B next to the entry, as there is later on the page for another "mother only" baptism

Ah yes.  So nobody was pretending this was anything other than a birth out of wedlock.

[Wendy2305]

In 1841 there is a 7 year old Hannah Hollis living with possibly her mother and siblings at Burton upon Trent which is just over 7 miles away Possibly the same Hannah who marries Samuel Bailey in 1862 in Walton upon Trent father William