Find Ancestors

Hi Simon,

I can understand your problem, how frustrating for you.

Did her Mum sign the certificate you have, or if not could you get a copy of the one she did sign, then I would go for a Marriage Cert, that way you might be able to rule one out, or even better, find a matching one from the church registers but it needs to be the original as the GRO one is a copy.

Kind regards
Amanda

Ok, thanks for your help folks!

It's the fact that she stayed around from February till April when she registered the birth that made me think that she may have had the baby baptised. Many baptisms at that time would have been in the first few weeks after the birth, and especially after having a child who was illegitimate I think many mothers would have wanted the child to be accepted by the church even if society stigmatized them.

Have to go to bed now, but good luck in your search.

Kath. x

Thanks Kath. As you might have gathered my mum didn't exactly have a conventional upbringing! For some reason unknown to me, her guardian had no truck with religion.

I doubt her natural mother would have got her baptised. I sense from what my mum has told me over the years that she only stayed around long enough to register my mum and then was never seen again.

If I wasn't 500 miles away I might have given it a shot...

Cheers

Simon

I must say I would be very surprised if your mother wasn't baptised. I know there must have been people who weren't but the vast majority of people were baptised in those days.

I think it would be worth going to the county records office and going through the baptisms for any church in the vicinity of the nursing home in the 2 months after the birth.

It might be a long shot but sometimes long shots pay off.

Kath. x

Tried A2A, Janice, nothing there...

Thanks Kath, I don't think my mum was baptised. Certainly, later on her guardian said she could go to any church she wished but that she wouldn't go with her. My mum went to the baptists and joined the Band of Hope.

We can't ask him about the records then :-(

Back to the drawing board!

Just been re-reading your first post on here Simon and I've just realised that your grandmother must have stayed at the home (or had contact with them) for at least 6 weeks as there is a gap between the birth and registering the birth. Does that mean that your grandmother had your mother baptised or do you think it was Alice Upton?

Most people had their children baptised in those days and i just wondered if there might have been more information on the baptism record (sometimes in earlier years a father may have been mentioned on a baptism when he wasn't mentioned on the birth certificate). However I'm not sure that this would have happened as late as 1926. Just something else to look at.

Kath. x

No, he died 4 years ago

Is your dad still alive?

Thanks. Weird coincidence - my dad was the archivist at East Sussex Record office from 1959-1964...

Google 'Access to Archives' or A2A

Sorry, where is the "Access to Archives" search?

Not that I'm aware of, Janice. Alice Upton, my mum's guardian (who never married) and her sister Mary ran it until the late 40s/early 50s by which time they would have been hitting their seventies.

Not sure what happened to the house, she came to live with our family for a couple of years before her death in 1962

Do you know if the nursing home records have survived?

Try typing the name or address into the Access to Archives search. 90% of the East Sussex Archives are listed on there.

Thanks Kath - I fear you are right, unless I get lucky with a tree match...

That's more likely. It would have a line across the name of father column.

Ok thanks, as I say it was my mum that said that. Her guardian wouldn't submit her birth certificate to the Post Office during WW2 so my mum could start work there, because of it.

But it may have been that it didn't have a father listed...

Ditto - and age of mother has never been on the certs.