Genealogy Chat

Hi all! I am trying to find information on my great grandfather. My grandmother believes her father is a relative of, I guess you would say, nobility or gentry from North East England. And I was just wondering if there would be a place that you can find out family history/lineage specifically from nobility or gentry? For some reason her aunts and cousins will not tell her specifically who her father is, but it has apparently been hinted at over several years. No one has outright spoken about it. If anyone could give me advice or help, it would be greatly appreciated as I seem to have hit a brick wall. Thankyou.

It was quite common for our ancestors to have been born on the wrong side of the blankets so to speak!! However you have to prove it first, and this can only be done by using the relevant county record office and trawling through the bastardy records etc for that county. It depends what era you are talking about but pre 1837 many of our ancestors were working in manor houses/country houses/rectories/other big houses below stairs and if they were pretty little things then the masters of the house took a shine to them and before you could say Jack Robinson they were pregnant!! No birth control in those days, so they would then be bundled off hurriedly to wherever and this may have been the nearest workhouse post 1840ish. Before that they would have signed settlement certs and would have been quickly moved back to their original parishes so as not to be a drain on the parish they were living in at the time, no glamour in those days, just disgrace and great hardship. They could not return to their own families because of the disgrace and the local squire would have covered his tracks very well!! However, county record offices are gems for this sort of material and you never know what you may find in Settlement and Poor Law Records. Original Parish Records are also wonderful where the local vicar does not shrink from telling the world about these unfortunate people. Apprenticeship Records are also a bonus, as the people apprenticed were often those that came from these sorts of poverty stricken backgrounds. "Burkes Peerage" is the book for nobility, which most big Reference Libraries would have but you will only find main lineage in here, no bastardy records! Janet