Family Historian User Group

I have known since I started my family tree that my paternal grandfather was illegitimate but never knew who his father was. My aunt provide a copy of his marriage certificate which had his father's details crossed out & illegitimate written underneath. At the time I, nievely, thought someone in my family may have crossed it out so ordered the certificate from GRO thinking the information would be there but it wasn't. Unfortunately I had already given the original document back to my aunt, stupidly without scanning.
I have just recently found that Ancestry now have more parish records which includes my grandfather's marriage record showing the crossing out so I now know it was crossed out at the time but it does tell me that my grandfather must have known who is father was.
I think I make out the father's name to be James Jones and that he was a miner. My question is what are the 'rules' for inserting James Jones as his father in my family tree.
Thanks in advance

Moppie, I have moved this to the Family Historian General Usage Forum, because it a question about FH rather than Research.

The normal practice would be to edit the Property Box of your grandfather's mother as follows:
Add James Jones as a Spouse/Partner of your grandfather's mother.
This may need an extra partnership if she also had another Spouse.
You also may need to use the arrows to the right to change the order.
Set the Status of this new partnership to Unmarried Couple.
Use Add Child > Link Existing Record to add your grandfather as a child.

To the right of this child entry, under Rel., you can set a relationship such as i=illegitimate for both parents or for either independently.
If he is also a Child of another family Spouse/Relationship then you might want to set his relationship such as s=step.

If more than one family is involved, when you investigate your grandfather's Property Box & Focus Window you will find he has two sets of Parents.

Dear Mike
Thank you for your reply how to insert the details in Family Historian but my question was regarding research. Maybe I didn't explain it clearly, sorry . My question was whether I should include the name James Jones as his father in my research if the name was crossed out or is it an individual preference.
Thanks

Personally I would include it, especially as it was written in to start with, there is a good chance it's true and as long as you record it with all the details so future researchers can see where the information came from. At some point you might be able to find supporting documentation if for instance your great grandmother tried to get "child support" from James. The other possibility is that James was your G Grandmothers husband or Partner but not your Grandfather's Father.

It may be you will never know the truth and Jones is not a great name to handle via DNA unless you have some other evidence to identify the James crossed out on the certificate.

I would be very wary, Moppie, of putting James Jones into your tree as the father.

It is not unknown for people getting to claim someone as their father when they weren't - the reason, of course, was to avoid the stigma of illegitimacy. For instance, my GG GF, James Maddocks, put his father down on his first marriage as "William Maddocks, Cordwainer". However, on his second marriage, he put him down as "William Griffiths, Cordwainer". The reason for the change of surname was that GG GF was getting "married" for a second time, while his first wife was still living, so he'd changed his own name (and therefore his father's, as well) from James Maddocks to James Griffiths. However, when I investigated "father" William, it became clear that (a) there really was a William Maddocks, Cordwainer, in the tiny village GG GF came from, but (b) there was no space in William's life story for him to be the legitimate father of James Maddocks. The initial conclusion would be that James is the illegitimate son of William Maddocks.

But, given that my James has lied somewhere about his father's name and committed bigamy, why should we believe he's telling the truth about who his father is? One possible option is that William did in fact bring James up - there are sort of stories about the Griffiths and Maddocks families living together, so James "Maddocks" could well simply have looked on William Maddocks as a father figure, rather than him being his biological father.

I can't offer you a definite answer - but I would like you to think deeper about the possibilities of what might be going on. At the very least, I think you need to identify your James Jones and see whether it's at all likely he might be the father.

Dear Jane & Adrian Bruce
Thank you both for taking the time to comment. The reason I queried it in the first place was that my grandfather's name was Thomas Jones Greenough. His mother was Charlotte Greenough so it would appear that she included the Jones as a middle name. So it led me to believe that as Thomas' had originally given the name James Jones that he knew who is father was, even if it was crossed out. Thomas' children & their children (me being one of them) are known with just Greenough as the surname.
I think it will be very difficult to research James Jones as I know nothing at all. I wouldn't know where to go from here.
Thanks

Moppie wrote: ... my grandfather's name was Thomas Jones Greenough. ...

Oh, now that's encouraging. It occurs to me that if you were going to concoct a father's name to avoid the then stigma of illegitimacy, then you'd be remarkably stupid to draw attention to things by giving a created father a different surname from your own. My GG GF, mentioned above, was pretty flakey in the censuses about what his surname was, sometimes using Maddocks and sometimes Griffiths. Nonetheless, even he understood that his supposed father's surname ought to match his own when he married.

So, on reflection, that suggests to me that it would be pretty unlikely that Thomas is making up a name. And if his own middle name is Jones, well, that encourages me to think that he was indeed telling the truth. It's still not certain - as Jane says, there are other options, but I'd now be inclined to add him to the tree - with the explanations and warnings as suggested by Jane.

As for finding him.... Was Charlotte in service anywhere? Was there a James Jones nearby? (If we're out of the census era, life gets tricky....) Were any of her sisters in service with a JJ nearby? I'd be looking to find any JJ, miner, nearby to see if he could be linked. Best of luck - I think you'll need it...

I was also thinking on the lines of looking for a James Jones living near by. Yes you are right I am going to need all the luck I can find if there is nothing in the census. Thanks for your help.