OXFORDSHIRE-L Archives

Archiver > OXFORDSHIRE > 1998-10 > 0907366844


From: Sarah Brewer <>
Subject: Re: Marrying off the Pregnant Lass
Date: Fri, 02 Oct 1998 23:20:44 +0100


Just a thought - and without meaning to be inflammatory or offensive -
didn't true genealogy go up the Swannee the first time someone fathered
or gave birth to a child that wasn't that of their spouse/partner? And
what about the rather lackadaisical attitude to adoption before it was
regulated in 1926? My grandmother lost a baby through stillbirth around
the same time as a man in the same village lost his wife in childbirth.
As he already had quite a few children, he "gave" the baby to my
grandmother to look after. However, my grandmother, on learning of a
couple in the village who couldn't have children, "gave" them the baby!
So whose child is that??
We are all struggling in the dark and have to make leaps of faith by
assuming that, unless documented elsewhere, what the Parish Registers
state about *X, s. or d. of X and X his wife* is true!
As my father used to say, *It's a wise father that knows his own
child...*
Sara

This thread: