Genealogy Chat

Researching a distant twig of my tree, I've just come across a wonderful birth registration for 1867 in Dumfriesshire, which states:

Mother ********** ******************, wife of *********** ************, who she declared, is not the father of the child, and furthermore declares that he has been resident in Ceylon for the past nine years

Love it!!!!!

The only drawback is her failure to identify the actual father.............

I have subsequently found the Decree of Divorce, and the husband's Declaration of Bastardy relating to the wee boy.

He obviously didn't think that leaving his wife and two sons for nine years - during which time one of his sons died - was a fault!

Check the child's marr & d.certs - the father might be named on those.

E.g., my gg grandad was named on my g gran's m.cert (her b & m both occurred in ABD).

I have a few Scottish births like that where the mother declares that her husband isn't the father of the child.

I also had a death where the informant was a son but with the mother's maiden surname. I spent a long time looking for him assuming he was an illegitimate child born before her marriage. I enventually found that he was born a couple of years after she was widowed. The birth was registered in a small village so the registrar probably knew that her late husband couldn't have been the father so the birth was registered in her maiden name although it did give her married name too.