Genealogy Chat

Can anyone shead some light on this issue....
I have a set of siblings, who all have the same parents.
All but one are born in Wales under a particular surname (born between 1901 and 1920.)

The second eldest was born in Glasgow (1912) with a different surname. This was not the legal surname of either one of birth parents.

Was it legal to use a surname that wasnt your own for a childs birth at this time in Scotland but not in Wales?

How did you find out about this sibling if they were born elsewhere and the surname is different? Who are the parents on the birth cert?

Seems odd the first child was born in 1901 and then the next one in 1912.

Rose

are you sure that you have the right family, and that you have not mixed up two or more families?

Thank you Rose and Sylvia for your input.
I appologise for the delay in replying...i lost internet connection last night and was then busy today.

To answer your questions, i discovered the childs name, year and place on her fathers army service records.
I appologise for not being clear in my first post...there were 6 children in family. The second eldest was born in Glasgow in 1912, the other 5 were born in Cardiff between 1901 and 1920.

I do not have the birth certificate for the glasgow child, but do not suspect that she had a different father.
My reasoning for this is that several members of the family changed their surname from the one they were born with to the surname of this daughter born in Scotland.

What i cant understand is how/why they would register this child under the new surname but register later children under the old surname.
(I have checked Scots People and she isnt registered under both surnames.)

I am hesitant to post surnames on the board since they are both very unusual and the family members being discussed are still living.

Gemma,

I don't know about then but now you can give a child any name you like....it doesn't have to be yours at all...doesn't explain why someone would do it though!!

Gemma

I did have one family with something similar to yours, not my family though


I was helping someone on here many months ago, we could trace the family so far, then nothing for about 30 years when they reappeared again.

Eventually I discovered that they had changed their surname, and lived under that surname in another part of the country until after the FATHER had died, when they all reverted back to the original one, including his widow.

They all kept their forenames, and were honest on the censuses regarding birthplace and birth years, so it was quite easy to trace them through the 3 missing censuses. They also all had jobs in the new village



The only thing I could think of in that case was that the change in name seemed to coincide with the move to another part of the country .... and could there possibly have been a crime committed?



sylvia

I think my reply has got lost somewhere!

Sylvia~ Thanks. As far as i know there was no crime committed! I believe the reason for the surname change was to make it sound more English.
Several branches of the family changed their surname, though the changes seem to have taken place over many years.

As far as i know they were only in Scotland very briefly...i dont know why though.

Is it possible that they "adopted" the child, hence the different name. Adoption wasn't legal until 1927 so could it have been an informal adoption.

well, it does happen


..... a couple of us had been really stymied with our gt gt grandfather. We found each other through here ... although we did have slightly different spellings of the surname of our immediate ancestors.

We could not find out anything before his marriage in 1834 under the name Schofield.


I evenntually found a resurrected part of the damaged 1851 Census for the Manchester area on findmypast .............. he was born in 1814 in Yorkshire (not Lancashire as we both believed)


Now it appears that the name was Scholefield, our mutual ancestor's parents moved to Lancashire somewhere around 1814, and seemingly changed the spelling.

Then .. just to complicate matters even more ....... at least 2 of gt gt granpa's sons changed the spelling back to Scholefield ...................... my gt grandfather and his descendants kept Schofield though!!



who knows why?!



sylvia

Seaham Lass~ I dont believe the child was adopted, because as i said the surname was one that other members of the family used in later life (aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins of this child.)

I think i may have to add her birth certificate to my growing list....if only to satisfy my curiousity as to what her parents surnames are listed as!

Sylvia ~ I suppose if doing the research was easy it wouldnt be half as interesting!
I have one family in my tree that has a different transcription error in every census. The father Pilot Teed is transcribed as Petal Podd one year!
If it werent for the years and places of birth i would never have found them.

Gemma

you're quite right .. it keeps it interesting!!


my gt grandfather Schofield became Silufield in 1891, courtesy of the transcriber!


sylvia