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Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2011-03 > 1300415198


From: Marianne Granoff <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] NPE rate
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2011 20:26:38 -0600
References: <554.46446.qm@web39605.mail.mud.yahoo.com><1D105552-A06E-45AA-B090-393837358E99@gmail.com><7F0DC31C-230E-424C-8DAE-622CCDB88613@verizon.net><D9B04ECA-77F0-4625-BD27-4EAD1C9D6139@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <D9B04ECA-77F0-4625-BD27-4EAD1C9D6139@gmail.com>


Most of the NPEs I have found doing traditional genealogy result from
an older man dying and leaving his second or third wife and her very
young child/children without the means to survive. The wife
remarries quickly (often to someone older who is also a widower) and
the first husband's very young child/children take on the second
husband's surname. This was a VERY common practice for a long time,
especially when the children were toddlers or infants. Young
children almost always went with their mother when she
remarried. Older children went to a father's relative and generally
retained the father's surname.

In my opinion, this was the biggest source of NPEs until the early
1900s. The majority of men were farmers and families were very
large. Women often died in childbirth. The men had to remarry in
order for the other children to survive while they farmed. It was
not unusual back then for either men or women to lose a spouse and
remarry. People died of many things that are easily treated today
such as malaria, pneumonia, infected wounds or injuries, etc.

My own grandfather was a victim of this type of "name switch" and
went throughout all of his school years with the surname
Haggerty. When he had to register for the draft in 1918, he had to
have a birth certificate, baptismal certificate, or other document to
prove he was old enough. That was when he found out his real surname
was Manley.

I didn't find this out until several years ago. I couldn't find him
for years and years in the 1900 and 1910 census records, even though
I had all his birth information. He was there - he just has the
wrong surname. Fortunately, I eventually figured it out.

Marianne Manley Granoff
Albuquerque, NM


At 04:47 PM 3/17/2011 -0700, you wrote:
> >From isogg.org:
>Non-paternity event: (NPE) is a term in genetic genealogy and
>clinical genetics to describe the case where the biological father
>of a child is someone other than who it is presumed to be.
>
>There are so many variables --loss of records, mistaken oral
>history, intensity of family shame, clerical errors, outright
>fabrication, faulty scholarship-- I don't know how you parse out
>"classic" NPEs from non-classic NPEs. Within a surname project, it
>seems irrelevant to determine whether a presumption of paternity
>stems from bad genealogy, or from very sound genealogy which is
>nonetheless erroneous.
>
>
>Lisa
>

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