named fathers

[philbee]

good evening all
just a query that i dont hold out much hope for, i had a cousin who did not know her father, her mother as far as i am aware did not tell anyone who the father to my cousin was, no body in the family ever new either and it was never discussed ,and i feel it left my cousin to a certain degree a bit bitter not knowing her father! she was a good AUNT to us kids when we were growing up and when we became parents ourselves as she could not have children of her own even when she married.
now the question is there any way of finding who her father was, over to you our resident researchers!
phil

 

[Alberta]

I think this will remain a mystery.
If the lady never discussed the father with anyone it is unlikely that she claimed any form of child maintainance from him which would possibly be the only way he could be traced but only by his child nobody else would be entitled to such information.

 

[Lloyd]

If the father isn't named on the birth certificate, then it's highly unlikely to be on any official document. Perhaps in a few years time when DNA ancestry tracing is more evolved it may be possible to narrow the search down to a particular family branch, but for now it's doubtful.

 

[dib44]

If there is no fathers name on the birth cert, there is always a possibility that the father could well be named on the baptism of the child, this happened with my grandfather, although no fathers name on the birth cert, nor indeed his first baptism, I persevered and found another baptism a few weeks later than the first in the Wesleyan Chapel and lo and behold the father was named...............

 

[frederick]

Philbee,
i am in a situation like that but After DAdoption who are finding my half sister that was adopted said that they will try and find out who our fathers were i was told that alot more is writen down than what goes on the birth certificate so i will wait and see whot they come up with.

 

[Alberta]

Frederick,this is often the case when children were adopted because the agency asked the mother for information about the father and it was up to the mother whether she told them or not.
In Philbees case it appears that the child was kept in the family and the mother never told anyone who the father was and there was never really any need for her to do so.

 

[frederick]

Alberta,
thankyou for the information if they do find information about my farther i could have more half brothers and sisters i will have to wait and see whot comes of it.

 

[dib44]

I have taken this from the Sussex Rootsweb site and it might throw a little insight in to illegitimacy in general.


I do not know if in general these remarks will help.

My husband retrained as a Social Worker in his mid 40s in the 1980s. He spent some time as a student in a Bolton elderly persons home. There he met a lady in her late 80s who had only just emerged a few years earlier from a mental hospital. She had been incarcerated as a 7 year old because she had been in ?moral danger? We would now call it child abuse. She spent over 70 years there for no fault of her own. After her release, she started to live, learning to knit, do pottery for the first time in her life. She was of entirely normal intelligence.

What does this have to do with the topic? Well into the 1930s and even into the 1940s some young girls who were unfortunate enough to have babies out of wedlock were similarly incarcerated for being ?moral degenerates?. There were many women such as that in the same home. Many only emerged in the 1980s with the NHS intention to reduce the number of people in large institutions.

I was born in 1942, so around 1960 was horribly aware of the stigma had I ?misbehaved?

A friend only about 5 years older had her baby taken away from her without even seeing him. She was 17 and her parents arranged it all. We knew nothing about it, until the son, some 10-15 years ago, himself a new father, under the new rules sought her out and we met him and heard the whole sorry tale. She was over the moon.

A college friend found herself to be pregnant (1962) by her Ugandan boyfriend. We were amazed the way that the college staff grouped together, sent her off to Africa to be married to lessen the scandal. There she discovered he already had a common law wife so sensibly came back! It was at least 10 years more before the stigma began to diminish.

Do not forget the Baby Farmers of Victorian times who might genuinely look after such unfortunate babes, or let them die or actually murder them.

What it does mean as far as research is concerned, is that illegitimacy was hidden under many different cloaks ? different names, stepfathers giving a new name, grandparents bringing up a child as theirs, children handed over to childless relatives or friends ? no checks because legal adoption only started 82 years ago. Many fathers would not have wanted their names to be known ? or even knew that they had fathered a child. It is only recently that Courts have demanded details of the father of a child when financial support is being sought.

I am so thankful that we now have a more open society and women and children are no longer so savagely punished.
From: Jean Wood