Social history/genealogy question

ifconfig

This is as much a social history question as much as a genealogy one.
It is the sort of topic I would imagine that might be covered on the likes of the RTE History radio programme.

There is a certain amount of taboo here as well - so here goes ...

Is there any general record of what the social trends were in the 18th century and carrying forward to early Victorian times with regards to children born out of wedlock ?
I imagine adoption was completely unregulated and very ad-hoc and there may have been so much taboo that the mind boggles as to the fate of children born say to an unmarried mother during late 1600s, 1700s, early 1800s.

I have come across parish records where the transcripts record "illegitamacy".
However, did the child take the biological father's name (especially in the case where the mother was unmarried)?
Was the child registered (as may be the case now) with the biological father's surname (if known) and subsequently changed upon the child being adopted.
Were there a significant number of unmarried mothers who kept their offspring despite the social embarassment associate with those more conservative and secretive times ?


My intention to raise this isn't to troll, etc - it is a question that has played on my mind for a while when considering all sorts of possibilities when tracing families back to early generations.

Coolnabacky1873

I wrote an article for my local history blog about instances of illegitimate births in the 19th century in the parish where I am from and the main source I used was:

Connolly, S.J. 1979. Illegitimacy and Pre-Nuptial Pregnancy in Ireland Before 1864: The Evidence of Some Catholic Parish Registers in Irish Economic and Social History, Vol. 6 pp. 9-24

I can't remember much about the general commentary in the article but it might be a good starting place. If you get a copy of the article have a look at the citations to see about other books/articles on the topic.

ifconfig

Looks extremely interesting and germane to the topic I was curious about.

I guess I can get it either via public library or perhaps it may be in the JSTOR Ireland archive (browsable in many public libraries).

Thanks so much .

shanew

ifconfig wrote: »

....
Is there any general record of what the social trends were in the 18th century and carrying forward to early Victorian times with regards to children born out of wedlock ?
....
Were there a significant number of unmarried mothers who kept their offspring despite the social embarassment associate with those more conservative and secretive times ?
...

A slightly later scenario I've come across a few times now is where a child is born to an unmarried daughter in a household and then raised as her sibling. In each case births certs confirmed the actual mother but no father's details. In one case the alleged father was mentioned on the baptism record.


Shane

pinkypinky

ifconfig wrote: »

I imagine adoption was completely unregulated and very ad-hoc and there may have been so much taboo that the mind boggles as to the fate of children born say to an unmarried mother during late 1600s, 1700s, early 1800s.

I have come across parish records where the transcripts record "illegitamacy".
However, did the child take the biological father's name (especially in the case where the mother was unmarried)?

Was the child registered (as may be the case now) with the biological father's surname (if known) and subsequently changed upon the child being adopted.

A few points: there was no legal adoption in Ireland until 1952 so everything before that will rely on records held by religious organisations who facilitated adoptions. In many cases, the plan was to entirely erase the child's "seedy origins" and birth certs were often just registered with the adoptive parents' names.

In my experience, an illegitimate child never took the father's name, always the mother's. I have also seen notes in parish registers saying things like "not actually child's father".

Coolnabacky1873

ifconfig wrote: »

I guess I can get it either via public library or perhaps it may be in the JSTOR Ireland archive (browsable in many public libraries).

Let me know if you can't get a copy of it and I will dig it up for you.

pedroeibar1

I agree with Shane in #4 above

It's a great topic and illegitimate births seem to have been much more frequent than generally publicised. I have come across a few references to illegitimacy in researching my family, the earliest being in a collateral branch. Written in an letter (1850, Ireland) it is a response to a genealogical query from yet another branch of the family and mentions ‘the large number of illegitimate children’ sired by the respondent’s grandfather and granduncle. The latter two were a physician and an attorney, practicing here in the late 1700’s / early 1800’s. There is a suggestion that they were acknowledged and used the family surname.

A very distant relative once emailed me that in c.1820 a man - same name & townland as my (then unmarried) direct ancestor - was named on the baptism cert as the father of an illegitimate girl who took the mother’s surname. I’ve yet to look at that record to see sponsors, etc to ascertain more info.

Another reference is in a Famine-era murder trial that I’ve researched. One of the witnesses for the State in evidence said she was a soldier’s wife; her husband was in India for many years, believed he was dead and had a child since he went away. Later, on cross-examination she admitted that she had since then had several other children, in addition to one before she met her husband and several had since ‘died’. The trial judge in his charge to the jury said it was 'sought to impeach the credit of a female witness' who had several illegitimate children, but ‘it did not follow because she disregarded and violated chastity that she should not be believed on oath’ which shows an interesting perspective from the Bench.

The most recent is a current project, my line, a girl born in the local Workhouse, 1890 to an unmarried mother age 19; the birth cert does not name a father – simply a dash/line in that column - and the pre-printed word ‘formerly’ (for the mother’s maiden name) crossed out.* At 23 the mother (again pregnant) married and her husband raised her first child along with their subsequent children (using the family surname). The illegitimate child was a beneficiary in at least a couple of family wills, which could mean that her ‘stepfather’ was indeed her father – she certainly was accepted as a full sister by her siblings, as one of them as executor immediately consented when asked by solicitors if she should be included in the distribution of a family member's estate.

*The mother’s father was named on the child's birth cert, I’m trying to identify his wife and I’m currently narrowing down my options, having already ruled out several from GRO certs., a costly exercise.

2rkehij30qtza5

Just another point to note on this...
During penal times and for a while after even, some parents did not marry each other. So the children were effectively born to unmarried parents, even though the parents would have been living together etc.
So I'm not sure if this would be reflected in records.

pinkypinky

Maryam Silly Haze wrote: »

Just another point to note on this...
During penal times and for a while after even, some parents did not marry each other. So the children were effectively born to unmarried parents, even though the parents would have been living together etc.
So I'm not sure if this would be reflected in records.

That's very interesting - I've never heard that before. Where did you read that?

2rkehij30qtza5

pinkypinky wrote: »

That's very interesting - I've never heard that before. Where did you read that?

I was told that by someone who gives lectures at a local historical society. The person who told me is also a history teacher and big into history. I'd trust the source.

ifconfig

I have heard the same.
Also even beyond the Penal times there were some clandestine marriages of folks who were nominally Catholic by protestant clergymen.
Notably the Schulze register :

see :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_Registershttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_Registers

An anecdote which I heard from an in-law in West of Ireland was that some native Catholic people couldn't afford burials (this may have applied to marriages also) and COI or similar churchmen obliged at free or a lower cost.
I haven't validated this in terms of written research or records but it sounds plausible.

2rkehij30qtza5

ifconfig wrote: »

I have heard the same.
Also even beyond the Penal times there were some clandestine marriages of folks who were nominally Catholic by protestant clergymen.
Notably the Schulze register :

see :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_Registershttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_Registers

An anecdote which I heard from an in-law in West of Ireland was that some native Catholic people couldn't afford burials (this may have applied to marriages also) and COI or similar churchmen obliged at free or a lower cost.
I haven't validated this in terms of written research or records but it sounds plausible.

Yeah I have heard all of the above too.

ifconfig

Part of my motivation for asking this question is that I am looking at some older records (18th century) on a particular family tree where a relatively rare surname in a particular region started out on Protestant census registers and then disappeared from that religion and appeared Catholic.

In the specific case I have one theory revolving around the demographics in that County and the fact that the Protestant ancestors did not own their land and so had limited marriage options.
The religion switch in question would have happened as early as 1760-1770s.
This was at the tail end of Penal laws and goes contrary to the conventional wisdom that pressures at those times would have been to remain CoI/Protestant rather than convert to the religion of the more oppressed majority.

I guess one slightly more unpalatable option is that there may have been individuals who bore the surname of a father acquired via illegitimacy - where a Protestant sired a child via an RC mother outside of wedlock and the surname flourished thereafter if the offspring continued the male line (while the legitimate heirs of the originally nominally protestant father died out).
That is a highly speculative theory but nonetheless it gets back to the question of what surname was acquired by children of short lived and so-called illegitimate unions.

Any thoughts or insights into this ..
Am I perhaps over-analysing possibilities ?

2rkehij30qtza5

ifconfig wrote: »

Part of my motivation for asking this question is that I am looking at some older records (18th century) on a particular family tree where a relatively rare surname in a particular region started out on Protestant census registers and then disappeared from that religion and appeared Catholic.

In the specific case I have one theory revolving around the demographics in that County and the fact that the Protestant ancestors did not own their land and so had limited marriage options.
The religion switch in question would have happened as early as 1760-1770s.
This was at the tail end of Penal laws and goes contrary to the conventional wisdom that pressures at those times would have been to remain CoI/Protestant rather than convert to the religion of the more oppressed majority.

I guess one slightly more unpalatable option is that there may have been individuals who bore the surname of a father acquired via illegitimacy - where a Protestant sired a child via an RC mother outside of wedlock and the surname flourished thereafter if the offspring continued the male line (while the legitimate heirs of the originally nominally protestant father died out).
That is a highly speculative theory but nonetheless it gets back to the question of what surname was acquired by children of short lived and so-called illegitimate unions.

Any thoughts or insights into this ..
Am I perhaps over-analysing possibilities ?

I think your theory is spot on.
Take the town of Bastardstown in Wexford. I believe that an illegitimate heir took possession of the local 'big house' after the rest of the family died. The townland then became known as Bastardstown after this person. I know it's not exactly the same as what you were talking but it does show you that illegitimate children did continue the line of the family and were regarded as doing so.

ifconfig

Bastardstown is interesting.
I had forgotten about that.

Without going completely off topic - in the case I am thinking of there are two alternative explanations for an apparent religion change in early 18th century.
One is the illegitimate heir-apparent theory which seems somewhat plausible.
The other is the switch from Protestant to Catholic by Protestant rural people who did not own land and had less voting rights compared to the landed gentry.

I've heard from a fairly authorative local historian that a lot of marriages in Ireland in the 18th/19th century operated almost along the lines of the Indian caste system whereby marriages were arranged based on spouses expanding their status or at least maintaining their social status.
For Protestants who found themselves in regions where marriage possibilities were limited and with personal security being an issue (eg, whiteboy/rockite/land agitation which became quite sectarian) it may have been that some less well off Protestants intermarried with Catholics when other options were exhausted.

How plausible is this ?
I don't think much has been written on this as it is social history which might not have made it into printed word, etc.