Genealogy Chat

I have been taking stock of marriages and births in my trees and boy oh boy but some of them only just made it to the alter before the birth of 'little Jimmy/Sarah'. My 2xgreat grandparents had 5 children that I have managed to find, 1857..1860..1862..1866..1867 and they only decided to tie the knot in 1875!!!!!....Perhaps Argos did not have a wedding list then......lol lol. Kathlyn

To be honest, I think that my generation in our family are the first to have been married before being pregnant (at least on my mother's side). I always look for marriages in the same qtr or the qtr. before the birth of the first child, as a matter of course these days. Kath. x

When I obtained my nan and granddads marriage cert. i found that my mum was well and truely on the way when they tripped up the aisle. Kathlyn

YEP Victorian values we held as so Uptight still didnt match what we eventually found went on, but its surprising then to see how many illegitmate children there were!. Relationships always went on and in view of so few preventative measures that were available its not surprising now of how many illegimate children arrived. What surprises me me tho that in the 1960.s,despite Flower Power,it was STILLthe ultirmate 'sin' to be an unmarried mum. Shirley

Same on both sides of my family - great gran and grandad married 22nd Dec - grandad arrived 11th Jan!!!!!!!

Illegitimacy rates have been at a constant average of 10% a year since records began in 1542! The only blips in these figures are during periods of war - the illegitimacy rate rises - and the most recent 20 years of course, make a nonsense of any sort of averages. Illegitimacy in this instance means - parents who were not married to each other at the time of the child's birth. Most of this was down to the church, which thundered hell and damnation to sex outside marriage. The congregation gravely nodded their heads in agreement - and got on with doing what has always come naturally, on the quiet. OC

Hi Robert, Maybe they were on 'Sabaticle' or the one in the middle did not survive. Kathlyn

At the other end of the scale, my farming ancestors never married until the girl had produced at least one son, thus proving her fertility. The daughters often had several illegitimate children, and I have read that farmers were in no hurry to marry off their daughters to unsuitable (i.e. non-farming) men. Having a few illegitimate children in tow did not stop the daughters eventually making a 'good' marriage - the groom being pacified by the thought of the possible inheritance of a farm. OC