Family Historian User Group

Hi Im from Scotland.
Has anyone researching their family tree come across illegitimate children further back. I have. On both sides! The birth certificate says father unknown, but Im told that this should not stop me, in that the Church may well have asked to see the mother and father and noted the father down in some other documentation.
Would love to hear from anyone who has come across this problem, how it went, if there was any success etc?

thanks

bon

ID:2316

Hi Bon

I've found a few 'natural' [wink] children this way - you can access the Kirk Session Minutes at National Archives next door to Reggie House in Edinburgh. It's free to get in. You need to know which parish records you want to look at, and then it's just a case of reading through the relevant years. It's fascinating. The ministers would get wind of some poor girl being pregnant, ask her to attend a Session Meeting and try to find out who the father was. In my experience, the couple were fined, then encouraged to marry, although it didn't always work out like that....

Good luck

Jo

Hi Bon,
I also had this problem with one of my wife ancestors, only the mothers name on the birth cerificate, fortunately we were searching at Reggie house and there was a note in the margin, on asking an assistant its meaning we were refered to a Kirk sessions record which named the father at a court hearing, they never married, but presumably he became responsible for the childs upkeep and not the parish.
Good luck Phil. [wink]