Illegitimate in Parish Records of Baptism

[Lyndi]

I found a child in the parish records when I was doing some research today,
and I am 99% sure she is ‘family’ – (I have ordered her birth certificate - if correct one is q2 1844).

Her parents married in March 1845, but in the records the child is baptized
in May 1845 – as the illegitimate daughter of the mother.

Would baptizing the child as illegitimate be the norm back then?

Wondered if any of you had come across anything similar?

Thank you

[Uncle John]

Perhaps the vicar was a stickler for accuracy. She was perhaps born before the marriage but baptised after.

[Lyndi]

Thank you for your reply - it could be that. And bless her, the mother had got form!! ;)
Their first daughter was born in 1840 (baptized as illegitimate daughter in mother's name, but father's name also on birth certificate, and she must have been pregnant when she married as the next child was baptized 6 months after the wedding.
Maybe the vicar's patience wore thin

[Guy]

I found a child in the parish records when I was doing some research today,
and I am 99% sure she is ‘family’ – (I have ordered her birth certificate - if correct one is q2 1844).

Her parents married in March 1845, but in the records the child is baptized
in May 1845 – as the illegitimate daughter of the mother.

Would baptizing the child as illegitimate be the norm back then?

Wondered if any of you had come across anything similar?

Thank you

If the child was born after the parents marriage even one minute after it was legitimate and would be recorded as such unless there was some reason to be sure the husband was not the child's father.
E.G. If the father had been in prison or overseas at the requisite time for conception.
Cheers
Guy

[Merry Monty Montgomery]

If the child was born after the parents marriage

But if you have the right birth reg and the child was born before the parents marriage.......................................... ................

[Merry Monty Montgomery]

even one minute after

I can tell Guy has never been in labour!! lol

Not many women could take their vows one minute after giving birth!!!

[Heather Positive Thinker]

Most would refuse I should think Merry

I had to laugh, I do love Norfolk vicars, they do add more than your run of the mill. I was looking at a PR earlier this week and under the marriage the vicar had noted "both of very ripe years" pmsl

[Merry Monty Montgomery]

Most would refuse I should think Merry

Indeed! lol

[KiteRunner]

It would be taking the marriage vows one minute before giving birth, to fit Guy's post, Merry - even more unlikely, I should have thought, but having seen Boston Legal, not impossible!

[Merry Monty Montgomery]

It would be taking the marriage vows one minute before giving birth, to fit Guy's post, Merry - even more unlikely, I should have thought, but having seen Boston Legal, not impossible!

lol - Yes, that's what I meant.....it didn't come out right when I quoted it! lol (I'm sure everyone knew what I meant!)

As I've told everyone a million times already, I have a family history contact whose ancestor was a bachelor, husband, father and widower all within the space of 24 hours. We hae always presumed the marriage came before the birth of his son.......

[Phoenix]

I have a rellie down in the birth indexes as William Broomfield Broomfield. He was born a couple of days before the parents' marriage, recorded as illegitimate in the parish register, despite being baptised after the wedding, but GRO entry gives him his father's surname.

a June birth entry could easily have been born pre wedding but registered in the following quarter.

[KiteRunner]

Phoenix, if you look that birth entry (William Broomfield Broomfield) up on FreeBMD and then click on the page number, you will see that there is a William Broomfield Simmonds also listed. It looks as though what probably happened is that his birth was registered before his parents' marriage and he was given his mother's surname, with Broomfield as a middle name, but because his father was actually named on the birth certificate, it was also indexed with Broomfield as a surname.

You will quite often find that this is the reason for those birth entries where the middle name and surname appear to be the same.

[Phoenix]

I'd do research so differently if I started over, Kite. William junior was clearly his Dad's son and those are the only two instances he was ever called Simmonds. He continues to cause researchers problems later in life as, Like Dad, he married a Charlotte. There were no fewer than THREE William Broomfields, all married to Charlottes of child-bearing age, all in the same small patch of rural Surrey and you could not disentangle the families without censuses.

[Uncle John]

For post-1984 births where the parents are unmarried, the child is indexed under both surnames, irrespective of which surname appears on the certificate. This may be true for earlier births but I don't have any samples to try.

[Olde Crone Holden]

UJ

That should be the case in earlier years too, where the father is named on the birth cert.

Earlier certs did not have a column for the child's surname, it was inferred from the father's name, so where two parents are named AND have told the registrar that they are not married, then the child's birth should appear in the index under both surnames.

However, in practice, I find that the local bmd indexes are much more likely to do this cross referencing than the GRO indexers!

Only this year I finally found the marriage of my 2 x GGF, when the local bmd project put it online, cross referenced under both the surnames he used. The GRO didn't bother with this "either/or" in the index, and as I didn't KNOW he used two surnames I could never find it.

OC