Father not mentioned on birth cert - illegitimate child?

Ideo

Hi there, so as part of researching our family history I noticed that on the birth certs for our granny (born 1926) and her sister (born 1923) that the father column is left blank.

From what I have read on the internet, this often means that the child born was illegitimate. I'm just wondering, are there any other reasons why the father might have been left off of the birth cert? We've no reason to think that there were different fathers to the siblings, so we are just trying to understand why the father column of both birth certs was left blank.

Leading from this, does anybody have any suggestion of the records to look at which might help identify the father?

Appreciate any time you take in answering the above!

uck51js9zml2yt

The father may well have been a waster which the mother doesn't want to have any claim on the child.it happens in 2016.

If he's not mentioned then the only way to identify him would be through letters or stories passed down.

lottpaul

You need to go back a generation to your Grannys mother --- can you find a marriage record for her? Did your Granny have the same surname as her mothers maiden name? If her sister is the oldest in the family then you're looking for the early 1920s or late 1910s. If not, then she may have been illegitimate. Convention at the time would have insisted that the fathers name be written down if she was married.
If there's no name for the father then there will be no other official/state record.

Another way would be to access the baptismal records for your granny and her sister. These won't be available online so you'd have to approach the parish itself. In many of the older records there's a mark in the columns to indicate that the father was unknown -- or his name may pop up.

On a wider note there's always the chance that you'll find some family history that people tried to hide, for very good and valid reasons at the time. It was a very different Ireland.

pedroeibar1

I agree with lottpaul – get the marriage cert and then work on the Baptismal registers. How the latter entries are written often depends on the parish and the priest. I’ve seen some state ‘Illegitimate’ or the father’s name-space is left blank, or ‘dau. of Joe Smith & Jane Bloggs (unmarried)’. It was a much more frequent occurrence than people often realise.

KildareFan

It may also depend on who was the informant for the birth. If the informant was not the parent, and was, for example, a neighbour or staff in a hospital where the child was born, the informant may not have known who the father was. I have found errors over the years where the informant was not a parent - usually the wrong name, occupation, address etc.

It's unlikely in this case, and more likely that the children were born out of wedlock and the father refused to have his name included on the register.

Ideo

I'll try to get the birth details for our granny's mother and go from there so. We have only just started looking into this side of the family so it's early days yet but I'll dig up what I can and post back and let you know. We only got the birth records for our granny and her sister recently and were very surprised to see no father mentioned. Neither sibling spoke about their parents much so there could be a long road ahead for us! Thanks for all your responses!

Ideo

Ideo wrote: »

I'll try to get the birth details for our granny's mother and go from there so. We have only just started looking into this side of the family so it's early days yet but I'll dig up what I can and post back and let you know. We only got the birth records for our granny and her sister recently and were very surprised to see no father mentioned. Neither sibling spoke about their parents much so there could be a long road ahead for us! Thanks for all your responses!

Me again. So we have located the marriage record for our granny and listed on that is the name of her mother and father, Elizabeth and Thomas Roche - however the interesting thing is that Thomas has a line written through his name. Has anybody any thoughts on what this signifies?
In terms of next steps, I guess I'll try to find the the marriage record for Elizabeth and Thomas. I have Elizabeth's maiden name - any tips on where to begin searching for this marriage record (if it even exists!)? They could have been married anytime between 1920-1960 so it's a big enough date range

Hermy

You can search irishgenealogy.ie for civil marriage records up to 1940.

If your granny's sister also got married I'd look for that record too for comparison.

pedroeibar1

Ideo wrote: »

Me again. So we have located the marriage record for our granny and listed on that is the name of her mother and father, Elizabeth and Thomas Roche - however the interesting thing is that Thomas has a line written through his name. Has anybody any thoughts on what this signifies?
In terms of next steps, I guess I'll try to find the the marriage record for Elizabeth and Thomas. I have Elizabeth's maiden name - any tips on where to begin searching for this marriage record (if it even exists!)? They could have been married anytime between 1920-1960 so it's a big enough date range

I’ve no ideal about the Thomas line crossed out – could it be a flourish on the cross of the T? Or simply a scratch on the image?

I’m not sure where the 1920-1960 comes from. A useful rule of thumb to narrow a search is to allow 30 years per generation and work on childbearing age stopping at 40. If unsuccessful, then start to widen the search parameters. Your Gran was born in 1926, her sister in 1923. That suggests that their mother Elizabeth was born 1880 at the earliest, so you might be lucky to find her birth on the GRO (not all from that date are available….yet). Her marriage should be there also if she married in Ireland, so allowing for a marital age of 18, and a child born in 1923, I’d look firstly at 1898 – 1923 for its record.

As Hermy suggests, look also at the certs of your grandaunt to cross-check.

Ideo

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

I’ve no ideal about the Thomas line crossed out – could it be a flourish on the cross of the T? Or simply a scratch on the image?

I’m not sure where the 1920-1960 comes from. A useful rule of thumb to narrow a search is to allow 30 years per generation and work on childbearing age stopping at 40. If unsuccessful, then start to widen the search parameters. Your Gran was born in 1926, her sister in 1923. That suggests that their mother Elizabeth was born 1880 at the earliest, so you might be lucky to find her birth on the GRO (not all from that date are available….yet). Her marriage should be there also if she married in Ireland, so allowing for a marital age of 18, and a child born in 1923, I’d look firstly at 1898 – 1923 for its record.

As Hermy suggests, look also at the certs of your grandaunt to cross-check.

Thanks for the repsonse. The records for Elizabeth, our great grandmother are diffulcult to find however she is included on the 1901 and 1911 census records. The unusual thing about these records are that the father is church of Ireland and all children RC in the 1901 census but in the 1911 census two of the children are CoE or CoI-need to double check that. I'll post the records this evening for you to look at. As a result of this, we're not sure where to begin looking for the baptismal records other than Irish genealogy.ie > church records. We thought this was a bit strange that they would switch religions - is that unusual?

pinkypinky

Not necessarily - it could be as simple as they decided to follow their father's religion. Someone of that era in my family did that. Or it could be that the person who completed the census was wrong.

www.irishgenealogy.ie (especially for Dublin) or www.rootsireland.ie for most other places are where to look.

Waitsian

lottpaul wrote: »

Another way would be to access the baptismal records for your granny and her sister. These won't be available online so you'd have to approach the parish itself. In many of the older records there's a mark in the columns to indicate that the father was unknown -- or his name may pop up.

One of my grandfather's sisters had two children born out of wedlock, both registered without a father's name. On their baptismal entries the priest has written 'father unknown' beside one, but 'father purported to be X. XXXXXXX' beside the second born. She later married X. I often wonder how the priest knew. Did the mother tell him or was it just something he picked up as hearsay?

Hermy

Heard in the confessional perhaps?

tabbey

mod9maple wrote: »

One of my grandfather's sisters had two children born out of wedlock, both registered without a father's name. On their baptismal entries the priest has written 'father unknown' beside one, but 'father purported to be X. XXXXXXX' beside the second born. She later married X. I often wonder how the priest knew. Did the mother tell him or was it just something he picked up as hearsay?

As a general rule, people were so much in awe of a priest, that if he asked her to name the father, the mother would comply.
Therefore it really depends on whether the priest demands a name, or lets the matter rest.

Ideo

Hermy wrote: »

You can search irishgenealogy.ie for civil marriage records up to 1940.

If your granny's sister also got married I'd look for that record too for comparison.

Thanks for the suggestion, however our granny's sister didnt marry so that closes off that avenue of enquiry

Ideo

So we have been researching into this a bit further and we could use your help and advice on the following.

So we reckon we have identified that our granny's mother, our great grandmother, had a daughter in 1915 (Mary Alice Archer) and that child died in the same year. We have identified the birth and death records, attached for reference.

The child was born in the same house in 1915 as our granny (b. 1926) and her sister (b. 1923) and all have the the same mother (Elizabeth Alice Roche).

This has really thrown up some interesting questions as the birth and death records include a father, a Henry Archer, who was a soldier in the 'Buffs' regiment. We have dug a little deeper on those records and I came across the following book which lists a Henry Archer in the buffs regiment (regiment number G/2411)

http://lib.militaryarchive.co.uk/library/infantry-histories/library/Historical-Records-of-The-Buffs-East-Kent-Regiment-1914-1919/HTML/index.asp#/502/

I dug around a bit on him and found out that he died in 1918 of malaria. I got his medal records from the national archives in the UK and the medal rolls from Ancestry.co.uk

41629_626640_11529-00240.jpg

41804_626640_12040-00084.jpg

Some more info on Ancestry.co.uk here

http://search.ancestry.co.uk/cgi-bin/sse.dll?_phsrc=WcO45&_phstart=successSource&usePUBJs=true&indiv=1&db=uksoldiersgreatwar&gss=angs-d&new=1&rank=1&msT=1&MS_AdvCB=1&gsfn=Henry&gsfn_x=1&gsln=Archer&gsln_x=1&msddy=1918&msddy_x=1&cpxt=1&cp=11&MSAV=2&uidh=6sk&pcat=39&fh=2&h=634055&recoff=5%206&ml_rpos=3

http://search.ancestry.co.uk/cgi-bin/sse.dll?_phsrc=WcO52&_phstart=successSource&usePUBJs=true&indiv=1&db=ukarmyregisterseffects&gss=angs-d&new=1&rank=1&msT=1&MS_AdvCB=1&gsfn=Henry&gsfn_x=1&gsln=Archer&gsln_x=1&msddy=1918&msddy_x=1&cpxt=1&cp=11&MSAV=2&uidh=6sk&pcat=39&fh=1&h=411224&recoff=3%204&ml_rpos=2

This is the first time that we have heard about this Henry Archer so we have a bit of information to figure out on him. Did he marry our great granny? How did they meet?

Any tips on where to take the next steps?

Still doesn't address why there is no father mentioned on our granny's birth records so we're still looking into those records.

pinkypinky

Have you checked irishgenealogy for a marriage between your great-grandmother and Henry Archer?

Hermy

I've looked at the Irish and English indexes for that marriage and found nought.

The military death notices for Henry James Archer only mention his parents and the Register of Soldiers Effects appearsto name his mother Eliza A. as the sole legatee.

Ideo

Hermy wrote: »

I've looked at the Irish and English indexes for that marriage and found nought.

The military death notices for Henry James Archer only mention his parents and the Register of Soldiers Effects appearsto name his mother Eliza A. as the sole legatee.

Yeah I came up with the same results. Was that civil records or parish records for the marriage?

I did find another Archer who died in the war and I believe is Henry's brother. Same parents and same address and also all are mentioned in the 1911 U.K. Census with ages that stack up. I'll post up his first name this evening.

As for Henry though, we'll try to gather what we can. I think his ww1 service record may have been destroyed during ww2 so not sure where else to begin though - any ideas?

CassieManson

Ideo wrote:

I dug around a bit on him and found out that he died in 1918 of malaria. I got his medal records from the national archives in the UK and the medal rolls from Ancestry.co.uk

If he died in 1918 he could not be the father of your granny born in 1926?

Hermy

It was just the civil indexes I searched.

Ideo

CassieManson wrote: »

If he died in 1918 he could not be the father of your granny born in 1926?

Yes i figured as much... this was the first we heard of him so trying to make the connection between him and the great granny is the question in addition to the lack of father on the 1926 and 1923 birth certain! No easy feat!!

Ideo

Hermy wrote: »

It was just the civil indexes I searched.

Ok thanks. I'll see if I can find out anything from parish records. I'm thinking to myself, could Henry have been based here in 1915 while he was in the British army and that's how they met?

Leading from this, are there any records of British soldiers based in Ireland in 1915? Googling this throws up lots of info about Irish soldiers in the British army during ww1 and British soldiers during 1916 but very little on British soldiers based on Dublin in 1915.

pinkypinky

Well, any records of British soldiers in Dublin would be in the UK National Archives, and it would take the form of service records, regimental diaries, etc. So there aren't records by year per se.

Ideo

pinkypinky wrote: »

Well, any records of British soldiers in Dublin would be in the UK National Archives, and it would take the form of service records, regimental diaries, etc. So there aren't records by year per se.

Thanks. Presume then that his service record was one of the many destroyed during 1940 so if it doesn't appear on ancestry.co.uk - the website has scans of all surviving records but our Henry's doesn't seem to be there 😔

CassieManson

The baby Mary Alice died of congenital syphillis - it might be worth looking for other births between 1915 and and 1926. I remember an episode of WDYTYA a few years back where this can lead to multiple stillbirths or early infant mortaility but after a few years healthy babies may be born.

It is possible that other children born to the Archers had this same condition or died young. It is also possible that your granny had a different father and therefore was born healthy.

Hermy

Ideo wrote: »

Thanks. Presume then that his service record was one of the many destroyed during 1940 so if it doesn't appear on ancestry.co.uk - the website has scans of all surviving records but our Henry's doesn't seem to be there 😔

I couldn't find anything for him on Find My Past either unfortunately.

pinkypinky

I remember that episode of WDYTYA although not the celeb. The ancestor was also blind and there was something like a 7 year gap which they then discovered was filled with miscarriages, stillbirths, infants who lived a very short time and finally a healthy child, all caused by syphilis. Very interesting but terribly sad.

CassieManson

pinkypinky wrote:

I remember that episode of WDYTYA although not the celeb. The ancestor was also blind and there was something like a 7 year gap which they then discovered was filled with miscarriages, stillbirths, infants who lived a very short time and finally a healthy child, all caused by syphilis. Very interesting but terribly sad.

Martin Freeman I think.