Genealogy Chat

Just reading through the post great reading i must add!! My Great Grandmother had her first child in 1892 she had six children with her first husband,then in 1912 she married my Great Grandfather 2 months later my Grandad was born! Now 4 years later another child was born in 1916, we have always been told that this girl was my Greatgrans first husbands child!!! even though he had died 10 years before she was born!! My father,Aunty even my Grandads couison who is still alive always thought she was a half sister after reading this post i now belive she was the Daughters child? We have thought it all a bit strange since starting the family tree!!! We were also told as children this aunty was a older sister to my Grandad. Loren.

Hi Laura fertility is a funny thing Women who leave having there 1st babies until they are around 40 battle against reduced fertility yet someone who has had babies before will quite often continue to get pregnant until menopause. I think the gap thing is significant The woman having these late babies tended to have had babies pretty well 1/2 yearly until they died or menopause. I would be pretty suspicious of someone who had a really large gap and then started all over again. The crazy thing about taking on illigitimate grandchildren as your own is that although people guessed and tongues wagged a little it was generally accepted as on the face of things morals were still preserved. I worked in Hackney in the 1980s and it was really interesting as a lot of the people I looked after would have been born around 1900. My eyes nearly popped out at some of the stories they told but I realised probably the cruellest most unaccepting time to have an illegitimate baby was actually the 1950s to the 1970s. Not earlier as I always thought. Regards Tania

My 2 x GGM Mary Green died aged 32 at the birth of her eleventh child - she bled to death. I have to say, the oldest mum I have in my tree is aged 46 and would be 'suspicious' of any mother much older than this. OC

I think you are right about baby machines. In my husband's family the grandmother was worn out by the time her last child was born. Lorraine

yes, no wonder woman died young in those days,they were just baby machines.xxx

I think if i'd have been around way back then, I'd have worn iron knickers! lol Poor women.

i believe my dads grandmother was 52 when she had her last child(we know that the child was hers as she was very poorly afterwards)xx

Thanks for the replies, I think it was definitely the same woman in the particular case I'm thinking of as she died in childbirth with the last one, her last 3 children were born yearly but all died in infancy.... Thanks for the info! Laura

I have people in my tree and my husbands who had children well into their late forties. They weren't like todays mothers who wait until quite late to start having children....they started young and just carried on having children every couple of years. Kath. x

Quite a lot of families (my husband's grandmother's for example) started having children in their early twenties and went on until they couldn't physically bear anymore. His gran had thirteen children - though not all of them survived. I know women who have been pregnant - naturally - at the age of 48/49. Lorraine

I have the odd record where mum was late 40's or early 50's having the last child. My great grandmother was in her 40's when she had her last and 10th child (she has a 5 year gap in the middle due to ww2) the eldest daughter was about 16 at the time and would have been disowned if she had an illigitamate child, and the eldest sons would have been forced to marry any girl they got pregnant to save face, Gran was prim and proper but his her own secrect that she was pregnant when with my grandfather she married.

If the first couple of children appear almost yearly, then a steady 2 yearly interval till the last few at much longer intervals then quite possible - if the later ones still seem to be coming close together, or if there is an unexplained gap in the middle I'd check to see if mum is actually a second wife, if the last children appear very far into the mum's 50s I'd suspect an illegitimate grandchild.

Well its possible but then some Mums took their illegimate grandchildren on as their own to save face for their daughter.Dont know how it can be proved tho if they lied when registering the child.

Just looking at a couple of the women in my family tree, they seem to have kept 'shelling out' babies into their 50s!!!! Is this possible/likely? ANyone else found this? Seem to get married about 18/20 then have 10-14 children up to their late 40s. One did die in childbirth, it just seems unlikely to be having children at that age still... Thanks Laura