Interlibrary Loans provide a quick way to order books and other physical materials from participating libraries around the world. Genealogical selections from the acts of the Louisiana legislature, Tennessee a collection of items including illegitimacy, adoption, etc. Bastardy bonds are not always available depending on the area but can be a good resource. Sometimes the mother would post this bond, but this was very infrequent.
These bonds can be found in the FamilySearch Catalog under various title names such as: court, miscellaneous, loose papers, etc. It is likely for them to be entwined with other court records, as it was uncommon for the court to have a separate book for these records. North Carolina Bastardy bonds and records North Carolina bastardy bonds. Other states have bastardy bonds, but they are not as extensive. To narrow down the search even more, include the state or the state and county that you are researching in to see what is available.
These bonds are not yet indexed. The bastardy bonds are not likely online for every county. They may be found in person at the county courthouses, if still preserved. Cleburne County, Alabama Miscellaneous loose files Chatham County, Georgia Miscellaneous bonds bastardy etc Tattnall County, Georgia loose papers Jefferson County, Tennessee Maintenance bastardy Nineteenth century Tennessee: adoptions, legitimations, and name changes Pendleton County, West Virginia bonds including bastardy.
These records are a possible way to learn more about your ancestor if they were the apprentice. Depending on the area, each apprentice record could be different. Ideally, they would list the names of the parents or guardian. The record might give an indication of who the ancestor was living with at the time. These collections may be found in the FamilySearch Catalog, under various titles such as business, court, and public records.
By doing this you will not get apprenticeship records outside of the United States. Certain cities and counties may have these records on their own websites for the public to use. Depending on the circumstances and time period of the parents, an illegitimate child could end up in orphan records. If the father does not help financially or is not in the picture, the mother could have had a hard time supporting her children. If she could not keep up financially, the mother might abandon her children, and they would be placed in an orphanage.
But there are also times when a child is taken in by a family, and no guardianship record was made. Look closely at the address where the baby was born, too: it may be a mother and baby home or a workhouse, which might have records you can look at. Surprisingly, earlier illegitimate ancestors are easier to trace than more recent relations. Bastardy examinations were the first step in this process. In the parish of St Luke in Chelsea, on September 8 , widow Martha Foss "saith that she is now pregnant of a bastard child or children, which was unlawfully begotten on her body by one John Sills of Burton upon Trent in Staffordshire, innholder.
Who had carnal knowledge of her body for the first time about June last, in the dwelling house of the said John Sills. Illegitimacy was a classless phenomenon; these children were born to people from all walks of life. Or perhaps there was some sexual exploitation - there's all sorts of different scenarios," says Paley.
Before the 20th century it was illegal for illegitimate children to inherit, so among more prosperous families you may find that a trust was set up to care for his or her welfare. Most were not so fortunate.
And look at the assize records for the 19th century and you'll find that half the murder victims were little babies," says Paley. I had just started looking into our family history and gathering all the facts, but some of the information I had about relatives on my father's side just didn't add up.
My great aunt, Rose, was born to Doris Cropper on December 23 - 19 months after Doris's husband, my great-grandfather George Cropper, had died. When I asked my dad about it he confessed that Rose had told him about her illegitimacy 15 years ago, at a cousin's wedding.
Dad had mooted the idea of tracing the family history and later Rose had asked him to take a stroll in the garden, where she revealed her secret: George was not her father - and she didn't know who was. Daughters could inherit in this region, and so these sisters did have a claim to the county once ruled by their late father.
But the regent countess denounced the sisters as the product of an illegal marriage and therefore not legitimate heirs of their father. The strategy worked in that both daughters did eventually renounce their claims to the county, but not without first obtaining a great deal of money, enough to make them both extremely wealthy.
As this suggests, the papacy had a far more passive role than is often imagined. As bastardy began to acquire its modern meaning, in the early 13th century, it remained the case that the papacy focused on the regulation of illicit unions rather than the exclusion from succession or inheritance of those born to illicit unions. Hatred of illicit sex did trump dynastic politics on occasion. Hatred of the children born to such unions did not. There is very little evidence to suggest that an interest in keeping illegitimate children from inheriting noble or royal title outweighed political or practical considerations in the same way that the policing of illegal marriages sometimes did.
Understanding the changing meanings of bastardy helps us to arrive at a clearer picture of the workings and priorities of medieval society before the 13th century. Society then did not operate subject to rigid Christian canon law rules. Instead, it measured the value of its leaders based on their claims to celebrated ancestry, and the power attached to that kind of legitimacy.
To be sure, marrying legitimately certainly received a good deal of lip service throughout the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, in this preth-century world, the most intense attention was paid not to the formation of legitimate marriages, but to the lineage and respectability of mothers. This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under a Creative Commons licence.
0コメント