Shame and scandal

[Pleater]

My uncle, Cyril Tuvey has just found out that his parent's marriage in 1916 was invalid as it was bigamous. Uncle Cyril is in his eighties and has been seeking for his father's origins for some time.

His father was already married, but was listed as missing - presumably after being wounded and then gassed in the Great War. He was in York and met my grandmother, a widow with two children. Her first husband had died early in the war and they married in 1916.

This of course means that all but one of my aunts and uncles are illigitimate.

One of the children from the first marriage died in infancy, as did one of the boys from the second family.

The reserch has revealed that we have relatives in New Zealand, but at least one of my aunts is not talking to Uncle Cyril for uncovering the dark secret.

This genealogy business doesn't half put the cat amongst the pigeons, but it can be fun if not taken too seriously.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

[Galician]

That reminds me of the advertising theme for the movie "Cold Comfort Farm," about a posh, young lady in London who had the yen to meet the relatives still living on the family estate.

"She went looking for her roots, and what she found was dirt."

[cessna152towser]

I wouldn't worry, one thing I learned from genealogy research was that despite our parents moralising us against sex before marriage, it was almost the norm in ancestry research that the first born arrived around six weeks after the wedding. I also discovered a great great grandfather who was born illegitimate, married his second wife just a few weeks after his first wife died and his best man or witness at his second wedding was the second wife's brother who had also registered the death of the first wife. The said great great grandfather later committed suicide by hanging. I also have my suspicions that another great great grandfather may have been illegitimate and that the people shown on his death certificate as his parents were actually his grandparents.

[Dixiecat]

Families are fun aren't they?

Once when visiting my mother's relatives in Newfoundland, my uncle (who is the same age as my father - 78) told me a story of his grandfather who buried his first wife while standing on the grave of his second wife, holding his third wife by the hand.

Now, he said it in a tone that was to 'shock' me, but of course my generation was pretty liberal and divorce common. However, during the time that the story took place, probably around the turn of the century, divorce and co-habitation just did not happen in the very rural community of Burnt Point, Conception Bay, Newfoundland.

The story is actually very factual but leaves out the crucial part. His grandfather's first wife was lost in the barrens berry picking one September. After she was declared dead, he married his second wife. She died several years later and he married for a third time. It was during this time that the remains of his first wife were found and buried beside the second wife in the family plot.

All this from the innocent question regarding how he and I were related, the marriage to my aunt notwithstanding. It was my first lesson in one of Newfoundlands most endearing traditions. The question of 'who's your father?'

[tulloch]

Absolutely fascinating! Real life is so much more interesting than what we present as "traditional" families. Thank you for sharing those anecdotes.

[McClef]

Well they do say you can choose your friends but you can't choose your relatives...

[madmacs]

If you dont want to find skeletons, dont dig in the graveyard...

Of course i'm sure that between both of the world wars, emigraton and the westward expansion, he's probably not the only one...

[EagleJCS]

The TV show 'Who Do You Think You Are?' aired a segment on the actress Kim Cattrall this past spring. She found out her maternal grandfather had a similar story (but not war-related - he just up and left one day and started another family, and worked very hard to avoid being uncovered as a bigamist).


My great-grandfather (ggf), while not a bigamist, did father children by two different women within months of one another. My great-grandmother (ggm) was about two months pregnant with my grandfather (gf) at the time my ggf apparently met and shortly married another woman (who was his second wife - his first wife had died in childbirth just six months earlier). My gf was born at my ggf's parent's home (my ggm was disowned by her Irish Catholic family), then six months later my gf's half-brother was born. Two years later, the second woman died of TB, my ggf married my ggm nine months later, then had two more children by her. My gf went to great lengths to obfuscate this timeline with the family records, but didn't deliberately falsify any legal documents. That's how I wound up finding all this out - I got my hands on the marriage certificates and copies of the death certificates.

I would imagine lots of families have similar stories, one way or another. At one time, it was not uncommon for a couple on the frontier of the U.S. to co-habit and start a family before being officially married by a minister. This was because there often weren't enough people settled in an area to support a permanent church and ministers would ride a 'circuit' and might only get to a settlement once a year. They would do all of the baptisms, marriages, and memorial services* over the course of a week, then move on. This was once considered 'scandalous' when discovered (great-grand-daddies' parents weren't married when he was born?!? ) and some families immediately buried the facts and discouraged discussion of family history. These days, most people have a better understanding/perspective and aren't at all shocked by it.

* Funerals/burials were usually held within a day or two of death, but the 'church blessing' of the gravesite and the associated services would be held when the minister was present.

[Ian.MacAllan]

. . .

This genealogy business doesn't half put the cat amongst the pigeons, but it can be fun if not taken too seriously.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

The landlord of an Edinburgh B&B once asked me if I were of Scots' ancestry. I replied that though it seemed possible, just on the basis of the surname, I had not looked into it in any detail. When he asked why not I said that so many Scots had emigrated involuntarily that I couldn't be sure I'd like what I discovered.

"Aye," he replied, nodding wisely, "a mon kin spend ten pounds finding suthin' out, and a hundred more hushin' it up!"

. . . one thing I learned from genealogy research was that . . . it was almost the norm in ancestry research that the first born arrived around six weeks after the wedding. . . .

My grandmother (once I reached my 20's) was fond of saying that the first child could take anywhere from a day to a year, but all the later children took nine months each.

.

[tripleblessed]

I wouldn't worry, one thing I learned from genealogy research was that despite our parents moralising us against sex before marriage, it was almost the norm in ancestry research that the first born arrived around six weeks after the wedding.

I remember reading (no, I don't have the citation) an article about a doctoral dissertation on marriage practices in colonial America. The findings were that in 1725 about 70-75% of children were born out of wedlock. Mostly because of the remoteness of couples from ministers, but not completely. Community standards come and go, but people have been people for a VERY long time. In the reality, many of the aforesaid couples had been hand-fasted or jumped the broom to allow setting up house while waiting for a preacher, but nature trumps patience quite often.

Also, DNA testing indicates 10% of births in the US today and 8% worldwide are "non-paternal" events. Who's yer daddy? Good question. Questionable answers.