Genealogy Chat

Hi, you may already know where to find this, I found out my dads dad was paying maintenance to my nana. I asked tyne and wear archvives where should I look, and they told me to look in the Sunderland Court Registers book.1/2 hour later I found it, I had been looking for John Taylor. It was registered in my nanas name.The court register had Cecil J Taylor, so now the search is back on. The only thing is the records are written as Bastardry!!!! How horrible. The Tyne and Wear archives is situated in the Discovery Museum at Newcastle. Hope this helps Karen

Karen I know lots of people get upset at the term 'bastard' but in fact it has a LEGAL meaning, which has been in force nearly 1000 years - long before it was ever used as a swear word. It was used to denote that a child did not have inheritance rights from its father, a very important consideration for hundreds of years, when this country had primogeniture inheritance laws. Primogeniture only ended round about the late 1800s, and as usual, it will take the legal profession a couple of hundred years to catch up! OC

Hi, thanks explaining, it soesn't sound as bad now. Karen