Genealogy Chat

I have just made contact with a distant relation on my great-grandad's side and from their research, they have come to the conclusion that great-grandad's stepfather was his actual father.

Great Grandad was Samuel Rowland b. 24/07/1860 to Sarah Rowland - his birth certificate names no father and his baptism record gives the same information, adding the note that he was illegitimate.

Sarah then co-habited (and, it turns out) married the arrestingly named Searson Norris in 1865 and they had two kids. My contact believes Searson to have been Samuel's dad and quoted to me that they had found the information on the IGI.

So I looked up the IGI record and found it was a submitted entry, not an extracted one, giving Searson as Samuel's dad. Samuel did name Searson as his dad when he married, but I have my reservations about this, given the information I have on Samuel's birth certificate.

Do you think it is possible my contact is unaware of the difference between submitted and extracted records on the IGI? I don't like to be sharp with them but I feel I have enough evidence that Samuel's dad was and always will be unknown.

(I suppose it is possible it was Searson, but I am dubious - if this is so - that he would wait five years to marry Sarah. She was living with her parents and baby Samuel in 1861 and did not marry Searson till she was pregnant with their first daughter Julia in 1865. My feeling is, she was caught out with the pregnancy of Samuel and then met Searson later.)

I suppose that is the knotty thing - if Searson was the father, it wouldn't now be possible to prove it either way. As I understand it, Sarah not being married to him in 1860 meant that - even if he was the father - she couldn't get his name down on the certificate.

I think this could be an everlasting puzzle. Interestingly, the parish baptisms for South Witham (where Samuel was baptised) are transcribed from the source material onto the IGI but only to the early 1850s. His mother and aunts are there, but his baptism is not.

I tend to agree with you Kate that Searson was not the father. I see from the 1861 census that Sarah's father was called Samuel, so this is who the baby was named after. If Searson was the father I would have expected either his first or last name to be incorporated into the baby's name somewhere.

However I don't think this is something you are ever going to prove one way or the other.

Kath. x