Fun with Parish records

[brigidmac]

I meant I'd never seen anything like the manx presentments for fornication not that I'd not seen sex before marriage .
Atrocities is indeed an odd word for what I hope was  mostly a  loving act

[KGarrad]

Presentments were the twice yearly report from the parish priests to the Bishop.
Parishioners could be reported for transgressing ecclesiastical law, and had to present themselves before the parish priest.

The sin of fornication was when a single woman gave birth.
She was supposed to name the errant father, or pay a fine (2 or 3 shillings?).

A married woman who gave birth to a child not her husband's was guilty of adultery.

Other sins were such as drinking on a Sunday, failure to attend church, etc.
These presentments gradually died out during the 19th century.

[Andrew Tarr]

Atrocities is indeed an odd word for what I hope was  mostly a  loving act.

Sorry  -  I was just reiterating a family 'joke' obviously unknown to many, and not to be taken literally  .  Loving - perhaps, but I suspect there was a good deal of droit de seigneur especially as the Good Book was often telling people to go forth and multiply !

At a local Come & Sing event yesterday we included the old French chanson 'Il est bel et bon', where the girl is saying Husband is good and handsome, does housework and doesn't beat me ...  Domestic abuse is nothing new !

[brigidmac]

Saddest finding of this morning was in a Northamptonshire village
Dec 1741

"Buried travellers unknown man woman and boy "
I wonder if they froze on a road

[coombs]

Bridal pregnancy was rife, as said, to prove fertility or a shotgun wedding or knobstick wedding where the parish overseers wanted the woman to marry the father or the man believed to be the father.

Also instances where the pregnant woman married a man other than the father to remain respectable if the blood father had fled or died or was already married. If a man did take on the child as his, then he deffo deserves his rightful place in the tree.

[brigidmac]

I agree that it's important that the man who raises a child or gives surname to a child deserves a place on tree .

I'm passionate about DNA connections so usually include
The named father ..even if dead before birth.
The bio parent
+ Any step parent

In order to see thru lines with  Ancestry DNA matches I have to set preference to bio parent which does not mean they are the most deserving to be on the tree .

[coombs]

Also you do not inherit DNA off every single ancestor who is biological. Yet a adoptive ancestor, ie a man or a couple who took on a child as theirs did all the hard work and the child took their surname.

[brigidmac]

1 lady I'm researching had 3 children before marriage 1793. John 1797 Charlotte + 1799 Phyllis

My ancestor.was the middle child we have matches to descendants of two sons of the 3rd one  and to a descendant of one of her legitimate sons so I suspect the husband was the father of Charlotte + phyliss as well as their 5 children after marriage

I wonder why ...maybe he was too young to marry or didn't want to but was pressured by her family or a priest .

At first I thought she may have been having an affair with a married man so couldn't marry her long time lover .

Henry the hubby was born 1795

[KGarrad]

1 lady I'm researching had 3 children before marriage 1793. John 1797 Charlotte + 1799 Phyllis
.
.
.
Henry the hubby was born 1795

Are you sure about these dates?