Genealogy Chat

Oh, I've had many a weep over mine. Particularly Jane Green, found dead in a field, of childbed, with her stillborn bastard infant. She was 19. She really really got to me. But the story had a curious follow-up. Jane Green's mother, Amy Green, died a widow in 1820. She left 5 pounds each to her surviving nine children and 33 grandchildren. The rest of her Estate, quite a lot of money and a fully-equipped and stocked farm, she left to her only ILLEGITIMATE grandson. He was the son of her second-oldest daughter. I like to fancy that Amy Green was so distraught at the death of her eldest daughter in such awful circumstances, that when the next daughter came home pregnant, Amy told all the neighbours to mind their own business, the girl and her child were staying here. Amy and her husband also twisted the Vicar's arm up his back and made him baptise the child as follows: John Moreton Green, son of Sarah Green, and natural grandson of Mr Thomas Green. The Vicar must have been spitting, cos he did so love to scrawl 'bastard' in his register. I hope I am right, and that Jane WAS mourned by her family, and they were sorry for casting her out. Olde Crone

I hope you are right. I have my own sob story of a bastard girl (my ggg-grandmother) who was sent away from home - just about as far away as was possible without emigrating, she was born in Essex and moved to Pembrokeshire. At least mother and daughter both survived, but after the mother married and had three more children she didn't appear to care much about the three illegitimate children - I've found no further record of the others in Essex so I can only guess that they were also sent away. Twenty years or so later the daughter's marriage is recorded - three months before the birth of her first child. It looks like she, having herself experienced the exile imposed by society on bastards, arranged the wedding fairly rapidly to avoid her child suffering the same fate.

Hi Chris, I think we've all come across things like this and we do understand. I was horrified when I found 2 of my gr-gr-grandmother's sister's children in an 'orphan asylum' miles away from home. They were just 10 & 7yrs old, and described as orphan girls. They weren't orphans, but their father had died 2yrs earlier, leaving their mother with 9 children to raise. All the others were either at home as very young children/babies, or working in the area. I think these 2 were sent away, not being old enough to work, but not young enough to be classed as 'babies' and really needing their mother. In the next census, they were back in their home town, and both married and had families of their own. I kept wondering about who had the task of taking them to this asylylum and leaving them there. What must have been going through these little girls minds, to be left in this awful place? On another branch of the family, my 3xgr-grandmother, was a boarder with a widowed man, and had a baby son with her. I presumed her husband (my 3xgr-grandfather) had died and the children, she had already had with him, as there was no sign of them anywhere in the census. After much perseverance I found him and the all the other children in the workhouse, in another county! They were only identified by initials, but were all together as a 'family'. We'll never know what really happened, but I can't clear my head of the thought that she upped and left him for another bloke. I guess he couldn't work, as he had 4 young children to look after, so their only hope was the workhouse. I welled up when I found him. In the next census, the children are all lodgers/boarders in other households, and no sign of him. Although I haven't found a death reg for him yet, I wonder if he died in the workhouse. He was only 32, the year he was in the workhouse, so probably died before he was 40. Debbie