Genealogy Chat

Could anyone help me?i have a marriage certificate for some one for 1882, on it the fathers name is filled in, but on his birth certificate it is left blank and takes his mothers surname. on the marriage certificate the fathers name is filled in with his mothers fathers name.is this a normal thing they did years back .i hope you can follow that.
thanks Elaine

Maybe his grandparents helped care for him, so he looked on grandfather as his father figure.
It may even be that the grandson was passed off as their own son, so he didn't know any different, when it came to the marriage certificate details.

Illegitimate people sometimes 'invented' a father to record there to save embarrassment about explaing the lack of information.

Gwyn

I would tend to believe the birth cert

if a child takes the mother's surname and no father is named on the cert this would mean the child was illegitimate

it was not uncommon on subsequent marriage for someone to "make up" a father's name to save face

if you can find the original parish register with the baptism you may be lucky and find the vicar had made a note of who the father was

you may also be able to find bastardy records if the father was made to pay for the child's upkeep

if the mother subsequently married, it is, of course, possible that her husband was the father of the illegitimate child and that they married after the birth, however there's no way of proving it, possibly the only person who would know the identity of the father would be the mother!

this is more common than you may think, sex before marriage certainly isn't just a modern phenomenon!

Thanks, looking back on a census he was living with his grandparents!
Elaine