Unearth the Past: A family history & genealogy podcast
Step into the fascinating world of genealogy and family history with Unearth the Past, a podcast hosted by the charismatic Dr. Michala Hulme. This show masterfully blends riveting discussions, deep dives into historical contexts, and practical tips for uncovering your ancestral roots. Each week, Dr Hulme welcomes an eclectic mix of guests—musicians, actors, sports stars, and public figures—unravelling the remarkable and often surprising stories hidden within their family trees.
Beyond these compelling narratives, the podcast serves as a treasure trove for genealogy enthusiasts, spotlighting essential tools and resources for research. It also paints a vivid picture of the social and cultural landscapes that shaped family histories, exploring powerful themes like immigration, industrial revolutions, and the resilience of past generations.
If you would like to get in touch with Michala, you can do so via her website, www.michalahulme.com
If you want to help support the making of the podcast, please visit Michala's Patreon account https://www. patreon.com/DrMichalaHulme
Unearth the Past: A family history & genealogy podcast
Ep 17: Illegitimate Ancestors: Why We Hate a Horizontal Black Line on a Birth Certificate!
Are you curious about your ancestors and their stories? Would you be surprised if your past held secrets you never imagined? Join me, Michala and my guest, Paul McNeil, as we uncover hidden truths from our pasts and learn that things aren't always as they appear. We share eerie tales of our personal experiences, including a chilling story of a piano playing by itself, possibly a sign from the beyond.
The journey to the past can be challenging but rewarding. In our quest to unravel our roots, we grapple with historical documents like Bastardy records, birth certificates, and baptism records. We share insights on reading the subtle clues in these records, especially when it comes to tracing a child's father. Little hints like the use of 'natural child of' in Parish records or a middle name bearing the father's surname can lead us to hidden truths.
Our conversation doesn't stop at historical records and their cryptic language. We dive into the world of DNA testing, exploring its potential in tracing our roots and unearthing family secrets. Paul shares his personal journey of using DNA testing to uncover the identity of his biological father, and we discuss how these tests can cluster related family members. So, buckle up and join us as we venture into genealogy, history, and some ghostly tales. You're in for a spooky ride!
To contact Michala, you can do so via her website www.michalahulme.com
Hello and welcome back to an Earth of Past, a family history and genealogy podcast brought to you by me, dr Michaela Hume. Paul, thank you so much for jumping on. I know you have a very busy schedule. Thank you very much for popping on again and taking the time. What have you been up to since we last spoke?
Speaker 2:Oh, all sorts. So the latest one yesterday, despite the super moon and the really high tide, I went down to give a little check to the local handball lifeboat Right I do talks around the area and if it's for a charity, I don't you know, generally take a fee, I say I'll give it to a lifeboat.
Speaker 2:So we went down there and had a little tour of the lifeboat station and handed over a check to them, which was quite nice. So it was yeah, it was quite a fun day. So a bit of that and a lot of research. Been looking into a few trees, some for the TV, some for private clients, so in fact I'll show you this. So it's finished doing that. Get ready for the preview.
Speaker 1:So what you can't? If you're watching us on YouTube, you'll just see that Paul has picked up the most humongous book. It looks very thick, Paul, so is that a family tree that you've just finished?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's 2.2 pounds, it weighs.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, ok, impressive. That's a lot of pages.
Speaker 2:It's a lot. It's a lot, so I just had to finish it all off, tidy it all up and getting off to the printers, hopefully tonight or tomorrow, so I'll be able to pick it up, get it out to the client next week, so that'd be good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and have you been doing? I know you mentioned about the lifeboats, but have you been doing any more talks, any TV stuff since we last spoke?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've got, I've got a bit of a trip up to Macclesfield right near me which was interesting because I was meant to be going to Congleton.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:It was the day of the, it was the day of the work to rule on the round. So it's five hours up there, hours filming, five hours back and it'll probably be like two minutes on the screen. Yeah, it's the quality that counts.
Speaker 1:Now you know, paul, that I occasionally I'm the historian on a ghost show, yeah, well, so yesterday I'm researching this family tree. Now can I just put it out there, folks, I don't know whether I believe or not, I've yet to really be convinced, but I'm very open to these. You know I'm open to it, right? So let's just leave it there. Anyway, I'm researching this family tree and the person that I'm researching it for is somebody who's coming on the podcast. And I reached out to them and I said oh, can you just let me know, can you just tell me what so and so's dad was called? And she replied and said yeah, yeah, he was called this, but you know he didn't really get on with his dad, so I don't know much about it. Anyway, I'm on the computer and then, a few minutes, I've found out that his dad has passed away and I've also managed to get a photograph of the grave. So I've sent that over and I've gone. I think he died in this year. Oh, and here's a picture of his grave. So she replied and said yeah, yeah, that's right, yeah, that's him, that's the person.
Speaker 1:So then last night she goes to bed, right, and in the middle of the night the son has got, like you know, one of those piano things that like start playing. You know, like when you're a kid and you've got those piano things, right. So in the middle of the night this piano starts playing. It's switched off. It's not like battery operated, You've got to plug it in. It's not plugged in, right, and it's switched off and it starts playing. She manages to get it to stop playing, goes back to bed. Only been in bed a short time. It starts again. So the only way she got it to stop playing was by so many people she started playing was by soaking it in a load of water, like literally like soaking it in a load of water in the middle of the night, right?
Speaker 1:So this morning I go from Iran and I'm just coming back from Iran and she rings me and she says look, I've just spoke to so and so sister, who knows more about the dad, and it turns out he loved to play the piano, right? And if we just go back to the day before, I've sent her this picture of the headstone and I'm explaining that the gap at the bottom of the headstone is because four people can go in that plot and there's only three people in it. So the gap is, when that person goes in, they'll obviously fill out the details of the person on the headstone. Well, anyway, overnight how weird is this right? So we've got the piano going off in the middle of the night. That is just going off for no reason, and then overnight the gentleman's second wife passes away and that is the person who will be going in the plot and will fill out the bottom of the headstone. So, look, I'm not saying that, you know, it could all just be a coincidence, but yeah. But, as I say, he loved to play, he loved to play the piano, and in the middle of the night the piano starts going and her husband whose dad is that was sort of doing the tree on. He's an entertainer himself.
Speaker 1:So I said, maybe come back, and he wanted a bit of a duet. Do you know what I mean? He's like you sing and I'll play the piano, who knows? But what a weird, spooky thing to happen. So, yeah, look, not saying I believe in ghosts, even though I do a ghost show. I'm just purely there with the history, I'm just there with the facts. But it was just a bit of an odd event that I thought, oh, I'll share with our podcast community Because I know that they'll like it. And then I was thinking, driving today I thought, oh yeah, I'll share with our podcast community. You know the UTPs that unearthed the past podcast community. But then I thought that sounds like some sort of disease, doesn't it that you need an antibiotic for a UTP.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the UTP community.
Speaker 1:I know what you mean. I mean obviously, you know, I do, I do a bit of work now, thanks to you for the same program.
Speaker 2:Yeah and I mean I can't really talk about the story. I found, one of the stories I found yeah, it's probably one of the most horrendous stories I've ever come across and I can't really say more than that because it'll give you a while, no, but really but, really. Yeah, it's a shocker, absolute shocker, this story. And let's just say you wouldn't want this one coming back in the middle of the night. You really wouldn't.
Speaker 1:Just to say as well, folks, when those programs go to air, I will let you know. So when we and Paul know when they actually come out, we'll let you know. We do start actually filming something else in a few weeks, but that's a secret so I can't tell you any more about it. So that's it. Can I just say as well, massive thank you to everybody that gets in contact every week. I read all your messages. I am gonna reply to some more, I think today. I think I've got some time this evening so I'll sit down and reply to those. If you are stuck with your family tree and you want to reach out to me or Paul, please you can do so via my website just wwmacalyhucom. Send me a message and I'll pass it on to Paul. Or look, if you just wanna book us for an event, you know, if you think I quite fancy a bit of, you know, genealogy and stand up, book Paul. If you just wanna just wanna book me because I'll chat for half an hour, feel free to get in touch, right, okay?
Speaker 1:So this week let's not go off. I've got to try and get these podcasts down to 30 minutes and it's so hard, paul, especially for all because we normally film, don't we way over an hour. But I'm focused today. Right, there is nothing more annoying annoying in life than ordering a birth certificate and seeing that flat line for where the father is. Just nothing more annoying. So today we're gonna talk about, you know, hints and tips, how can we get around it, stories that maybe will help you. Things that we've encountered in our research, paul, kick us off. So I know Paul has done some fantastic family trees the regular people like me, but also you know he has looked into some Hollywood superstar family trees and so forth. So have you come across Paul? I'd say in every family tree, you generally come across somebody who is illogist, isn't it? Would you agree?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, they estimate that around about 10% of all births are not to the father that they're meant to be, despite whatever it may say on the birth certificate. So it's very common. Very rarely you get one that's not to the right mother but the right father is something else. That happens quite a lot and I suppose it's fine if you know that. So if you know someone's born out of wedlock, as they would have said, or whatever.
Speaker 2:So if you go to a parish record from years ago, you look in there and generally it would say you know name, the father name, the mother name, the child when they were baptized. It might tell you where they lived or it might tell you what they did for a living. But occasionally, depending on the vicar in charge, you will just have to say the mother's name and it might say things like baseball child or natural child of.
Speaker 2:So if it's baseball, it means they weren't married. If it's a natural child of, quite often it will have both names of the parents but it will be indicating that the parents weren't married. It's just that the kind of, if you like, the man is only enough to be in the father of the child and then you get the. You know you go to Scotland and you look through like the Presbyterian records and they're all fire and brimstone and they'll just say illegitimate or bastard. You know you'll see this written in to the parish records and sometimes you see a little there'd be a little homily in there berating the woman generally, you know, for having a child out of wedlock and now she was ashamed to her parents and this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:I've mainly seen that in Scotland rather than in England. So that's kind of straightforward because you can sometimes draw inferences from that who the parents might be or who the father might be. The problem you get is when you get birth certificate and, as you say, it's just got a line and you don't know who it is and then you got to start looking for clues and I mean I find these in families. So I did. If you look at someone like Tom.
Speaker 2:Hardy out of interest. I just did his three years ago and actually his name should probably be Tom H Moore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right yeah.
Speaker 2:Original family name. You look at Robbie Williams on his feral line I traced his grandfather's line and you find a baby that's born. But it's born three years after the father died. And then you look on the census and you start trying to find clues to why this could be. We can come on to some of the clues. And then Fred Dyanage I did Fred Dyanage's tree and we did a bit on Meridian.
Speaker 2:About it down here on ITV and we had an ancestor at the Battle of Waterloo. We had an ancestor who was on the, or a relative who was on the Titanic, but he also had an ancestor who was meant to be from his great, great great, whatever grandparents, but was actually the child of their daughter, and the grandparents or the great grandparents had taken on that child as their own. So, again, you have to then start looking for clues to what could cause this. I mean, the obvious thing is there's DNA, but there are other things you can do if you haven't gone that far.
Speaker 1:I was going to say as well. It was common that people did take on children, not only, for example, grandparents taking on their grandkids as if they're their kids, but also neighbors and friends talking people's children. Just because and it's worth bearing this in mind the father isn't present, for example, on a parish record on a baptism, doesn't necessarily mean that the child was illegitimate. And I'm sure you're, paul, you're back me up with this. Sometimes the registrar or whoever it is who's conducting the ceremony, wouldn't, wouldn't put the father on if he wasn't present, so he might have been away at war, for example. Therefore he's not actually named on the baptism.
Speaker 1:I've got it with a case at the moment, exactly the same as what you've said. So when you go back into the family tree, if you go back to the great, great grandmother, she's actually given her son her maiden name, in effect, right, and we don't know who the dad is. Now, even with DNA, the likelihood is I would not be able to find that out, because I remember chatting to Laura House, brilliant DNA expert, about this, and she said when you're going back to sort of great, great grandparents, it is difficult to pinpoint who it is. It's not a straightforward if it's a closer than if it's a closer relation. Even using DNA probably wouldn't help me that much in that situation. But there are clues, as you've said, paul, that we can, you know, we can look out, for If we go back and maybe we start with parish record, a clue is sometimes in the name, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean what you'll find is it was very difficult for a woman to name a father, as you say, if you didn't want to be named, if you denied it, it was, it was illegal by the time burst of it's come out to put someone's name down. If he denied it, it was like a you know a lot a libelous thing to do so with parish records. What would often happen is that the child might have the same first name as a father, or it might be given a middle name which is an unusual name, you know, like Jones or something like that, for a middle name. So what the? What the woman would do is hint, because she could give the child any name she wanted. So she would hint at the father's surname in the middle name the child. So quite often, if you see it like a surname, as a middle name, and obviously the father wasn't present when the baptism took place, you've probably got a clue as to who the father really was. So that's not useful.
Speaker 1:Another record which is quite useful if we're thinking about that period of parish records are Bastadi bonds, so these can be really useful. So if, for example, if a woman has had a child in the parish, the likelihood is that she is going to need to claim relief, so she is going to need parish assistance. Now the parish are not too pleased about this and they don't want to pay for it. So what they then do is track down the father. He may be in that parish, he may be in another parish and they will basically charge him. They will make him pay for whatever they're paying to keep, basically, his child. So that's kind of what they are in a nutshell. Now you can find these often in overseers, records in Paul or records also in in sort of quarter sessions. You may find them. It is a document that I have used, but I've used Bastadi books, which come a bit later. So I've used Bastadi books from the mid 20th century and that is basically a book of all the women and they were just women in this book that had taken mental courts claiming that they were the father of their child and the father had to pay maintenance to that child until it's a certain age. Now, in the case that I was looking at, it was proven that he was the father. Don't quite know how they did that without DNA, but you know it was proven that he was the father and he had to pay so much money until the child, I think, was 60 right. So so there are Bastadi bonds and there are Bastadi books.
Speaker 1:But Paul or records are great and if you've ever read Paul or minute books, they are really interesting, aren't they, paul? You know it's not just I know we're talking about illegitimate ancestors today, but it's like you know, they gave so and so, so much for a pair of shoes, or they paid for a coffin for somebody. They are really worth checking out because it does. It does mention people by name, but again, you would need to know what parish they lived in yeah, you can also remove all records.
Speaker 2:So if a pauper has gone from their parish of birth and quite often they would have gone to London or somewhere like that they turn up and there's still a pauper, the parish officers will say, well, where are you from and who do all these kids belong to? And they would find out, before they would give any relief, the original parish that the person was from. They'd want to know about the father of the children so they could, you know, interrogate usually the woman about this, but sometimes whole families, and they can sometimes hold clues to say, okay, well, they were. Although they turn up in London, we don't expect them. You see the removal records and they've been removed back to, you know, lancashire or to South of the River or wherever it might be. And sometimes you get notes in there where the woman will save her peace and talk about a family, talk about why she's poor, talk about why the father isn't there. So you can get clues from that.
Speaker 2:The other interesting thing is with the Barstley records. Sometimes you see guys suddenly joining the army or the navy and if these guys were being pursued for maintenance effectively join the army or the navy quite often they could get exemption from having to pay for their, for their children, while they were serving. So they'd be liable, you know, if they weren't serving but while they were serving. So all of a sudden you might see a guy from a village suddenly turn up in a troop at Dragoons or join HMS Cyclades or whatever in the, you know, in Portsmouth, and he's running away from his responsibilities. So he doesn't have to pay this money. So that it's a subtle clue, but the things like that can can give you clothes. But if you find him in the in those records and it says he's joining the army or the navy, then you've got another route to travel to find out what happened to him after that, and it's probably easy to track does he go back to his village and, you know, marry the girl, or does he go off somebody somewhere else or what?
Speaker 1:also, if you get a birth certificate and the father isn't named, it's always worth, isn't it, paul? Just checking out the baptism record, because sometimes, you know, it may have been when she's as I said before, when she's gone to register the birth, for whatever reason, the father isn't present, right. But when it comes to the baptism, it may be that he is present, or it may be that I don't know. You know, a lot of children get baptized quite a bit, don't they? After they were born, maybe within the first year or so. It might be that the couple have got together and they're now married, but they just weren't together at the time that the birth was registered. So I would say, if you are getting a flat line you know that horizontal line that we all hate on a birth certificate don't let it put you off in that respect. You know, go and check out the baptism, because he may be listed on the baptism record.
Speaker 2:The other thing you find is sometimes someone would be brought up as a child with one name and then later in life they'll change their surname. And this happened to me, this my, my, my mom's mom, so my name. I always believe that her surname was Kimber. I could never find her in the records and I searched and searched and searched. They came from a place near Basin Stoke and then up to London. I could never find her in the records anywhere, martha Kimber. And then years later, years after she died, I was talking to one of my aunts about it and I said, yeah, I could never find your mom in the records.
Speaker 2:I was looking up, you know, martha Kimber. I said the only way that I could find that was like close, it seemed to be something to do with it was someone called Wise WISE. And my aunt went oh yes, she used that name sometimes and I was what. I spent 10 years trying to find her and what it was. Her mom was a maid at a house in in in in in London and her father was a guy whose family owned a dairy there and he was working as a milkman. Not at the door every morning. Made it open the door, he'd chat her up.
Speaker 2:You know, ernie, fastest milkman in the west all of this and basically got pregnant, and his family were quite well to do. Although he was a milkman, he was actually working for his father's company, you know. So his name was Kimber, her name was Wise at the time she got pregnant. Unfortunately, it was right at the time when doctors took over from midwives to deliver babies and introduced forceps. But they didn't understand the concept of germ theory and cleanliness. So this doctor had delivered the baby and my great-grandmother contracted pure purple fever, which is basically where they don't wash the forceps properly. They don't disinfect them between births. If one woman has got an infection, they spread it to all the other women that they deliver with those forceps. And this is why deaths of births from doctors was much higher in the early years. And it was from midwives, because midwives did everything by hand, you know, washed their hands in carboleca afterwards and all this kind of thing. So they were actually cleaner than the implements that the doctors were using.
Speaker 2:Anyway, cut-long story short, the mother died, the baby was born and then the parents obviously pursued this family that was well off, because they knew it was. They knew the father was because she'd obviously told them Not written anywhere. So they pursued them and what happened was they took the baby and they gave her to an elderly aunt and uncle of the milkman who had no children of their own. So I found this Martha Wise, who then became Martha Kimber, living with Kimbers, but they were, like you know, 50-odd years older than her. So it was very unlikely they were the parents and it turned out that they were an aunt and uncle that agreed.
Speaker 2:They never had children. They wanted them and they took her and they raised her and through her life she either used the name Kimber or she used the name Wise. So kind of almost worse than not knowing her name is knowing the wrong name, because she keeps hitting that brick wall where you can't get any further. And on the same point, the worst thing is having an adverse certificate with no name on it, because then you have to just start looking. The worst thing, as in my case, was having a birth certificate with your father's name on it, that he's not your father. So my dad was my dad, but he wasn't my biological father but his name was on my birth certificate.
Speaker 1:And how old were you, paul, when you figured that out?
Speaker 2:64.
Speaker 1:So, for those that have not listened to the podcast before, Paul has spoke to us about his shock actually doing a DNA test at the age of 64. Yeah and finding out that his dad was not his biological father.
Speaker 2:All of my family died without telling me. They all knew that my dad wasn't my dad, but dad knew.
Speaker 1:I was going to say did you think, obviously I know your dad knew, but did you think that they knew as well? Do you think everybody knew?
Speaker 2:I know everybody knew because I've called up one of my last living cousin, the older than me, the last one the older than me that's still living. He's 80. And I've told this story before and I just asked him. He was 13 when I was born. So I said you know, is there, were there any stories about me at birth? And he was very sort of reluctant at first to talk about it. Well, you know, let me get back to you. Then his wife had a check to him, because even she knew, and so Stavey, just tell him. So he found me back and he said yeah, you know, this is what happened. He told me a few stories. He obviously was only 13,. He didn't have the full story, but he knew it enough to give me a clue.
Speaker 2:And then the DNA. Let me track down the real family you know.
Speaker 1:When you found that out and I know that there's going to be people listening to this right who are probably in a similar situation to you how did it make you feel about the people that knew? Were you kind of a bit better that they not told you, or were you just like you know what? They were young as well, and it is what it is.
Speaker 2:Well, it was just a surprise really. I mean, I thought you know, play the game. One of you could have told me once one of them was dead. The other one could have said something, you know, because they all died. But I'm, you know, in the 20s. My brother was dead, my mom was dead, my dad was dead, so they're all gone early in my life, kind of thing. So I grew up without any of them and not one single person ever mentioned the situation. So it just shows you, even in modern times, where it doesn't really matter, people think it matters and they keep it back for you.
Speaker 2:I mean, I wasn't upset because it's like, well, I can't do anything about it. You know my dad was my dad. He ever bloke effectively was a sperm donor and these things happen. You know that's kind of life and you've got to get on with it. And you know I've turned out lovely. Look at me. You know.
Speaker 1:That's debatable folks.
Speaker 2:It shows you the secrets that it even kept nowadays, let alone when there was a huge shame to be in Paul, now wedlock. So you never know what you're going to find. And years ago I mean it had, you know, legal financial implications. I've mentioned before I did a family tree on the vampire lord of her spawn priors. You know an English aristocrat, a false mess, who was denounced as a vampire in 1821 in the British cold and basically he was mentally ill and he'd been juked by the woman he married. He'd been juked by the buyer and into marrying her there's all sorts of such a story and she was sleeping with a man who claimed to be her doctor and obviously he wasn't, but she got pregnant.
Speaker 2:And as soon as the pregnancy happened, the situation became really serious because that his brother didn't believe that this was his child, because the guy was quite naive and in court they cross examined him to see if he understood how men and women make a baby and he kind of didn't really know. I mean, this guy was like in his probably in his fifties by then.
Speaker 2:It was like you really know how it happened. So they decided that this child couldn't inherit and the line passed across to his brother because there was serious implications. So no real proof. Funnily enough, the daughter grew up. I mean, lots of different things happened to the family, but the daughter grew up and ran a pub in Surrey. In the end she married a policeman and ran a pub up on the canal at New Hay in Surrey. So there you go.
Speaker 1:When I was looking into the family tree that I'm doing at the moment, I knew actually, when I ordered the marriage certificate of this particular person late Victorian period I thought, hmm, that name seems familiar. And the dad on the marriage certificate when it says you know, rank and profession of the father and whatever, was actually the granddad. And that was when a lamb bell started to go for me and I thought, okay, so the mother has obviously just told you know, told us on, put down your granddad. You know, put somebody on there. I know, let's put your granddad on there. You know it saves the sort of the stigma of you being a legitimate.
Speaker 1:And the mum had married. She'd read married by by this point. She sort of had this child out of wedlock and then it was only a few years later that actually she, she, remarried and the guy obviously had a pretty good relationship with her. You know he is living with her and a husband and his half siblings. I think on the 1911 census and in the family plot she's buried in the family plot with him, him and his wife. So they obviously had a good relationship. But on his marriage certificate the name of the father is actually the grandfather, you don't know who the father is.
Speaker 1:So that's the question yeah, I was going to say, and again yeah, it's.
Speaker 2:So it's not me, because sometimes the child will, just because there's no legal reason why the child shouldn't write on there. So if they, if their mother's, told them who they think their dad was, sometimes if you get a marriage certificate, this strange name will come up and it's like maybe the true father in that case? Obviously it wasn't. But you know, sometimes you can get a clue from there.
Speaker 1:Now DNA, right?
Speaker 1:So obviously DNA is huge.
Speaker 1:I work with a lot of people who are looking for their birth parents and it just would not be possible to find their birth parents without DNA.
Speaker 1:I know Laura's been on and she said that you know, when you get your DNA results you really want to focus on your cousin matches, try and group them into into, have a look who their who their matches are and color coordinate them, put them into groups as to who they're related to, right? So if I don't pick that a bit, so click on a cousin match, see who they're, who they share DNA with, and whack them in a group and what you should end up with is distinct groups of people that share DNA with each other. This will help you sort of plot your tree. You will end up probably doing family trees for these people to figure out how they are intimately connected, which, like you tell you, will might say forever, but it is definitely worth doing. We will be doing another session on DNA, but if you haven't seen our chat with Laura House, I will put a link to that episode in the in the description below.
Speaker 2:Paul, I'm sorry. I take nothing on. That is, to look for very strong links to family names that you've got absolutely no connection with in three.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's how I found my side of it it was. It was that they gave it away too many really close links to names that had no bearing on my tree. That I've done from the certificates and that's that's a strong clue.
Speaker 1:Obviously you use DNA right and I know we've mentioned this before on the podcast but you have used DNA to find out who your biological father is right. Have you used DNA in other family trees you've been doing to help solve illegitimate ancestors Like? Has it proved pretty useful for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, yes and no, it really depends how far back it happened. So the problem, as you know, is every generation you lose half your genes from the previous generation. So you know you don't get a mixture of everything. You get half of what your father's got, half of what your mother's got, and the rest is thrown away. So that's disappeared. So in five generations you could potentially lose more or less everything from the people before that.
Speaker 2:So it can be quite difficult. Why chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA are different? Because they tend to come down, you know, as they are mitochondrial DNA to everyone, from your mother. Why chromosome DNA? Obviously only through the male line, but it's a really good indicator in the male line of who the father, grandfather, et cetera, et cetera are. But then it's less refined than the autosomal DNA which has lots and lots of patterns in it. So the why chromosome like with my one, I mean you know it could be one of three brothers, my real father, so I don't know the actual father is. And then you have to start looking at time, age and geography for opportunity. So are they old enough? Were they in the right era at the right time? And so I would say time, age and opportunity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, and geography, so were they in?
Speaker 2:the right era at the right time. Were they there at the right time and are they at the right age? Were they married or not married? Because that would generally make a difference. So you have to start looking at things like that, and you may never know for sure, and if they've died, it's only supposition.
Speaker 1:Then so we have hopefully given you some hints and tips. So check out Bastardy Bonds. As I say, have a look in those poor law records. Also quarter sessions, you know, did somebody take the gentleman to court to try and get maintenance? There are Bastardy Bonds. As I say, I've looked at them in the mid 20th century. Again, check out your local records office, because not every records office has them, but it was. When I searched through them it was basically just a list of everybody who'd been to court, like a family court, and whether they had been proven to be the father or not, whether they had to pay maintenance and how long they paid maintenance for. So that's quite useful.
Speaker 1:Also, don't forget what Paul said have a look at the names. Names are important. You know, if you've got a middle name and you think it's a surname, could that be the mother sort of secretly giving a little nod to the biological father of the child? Again, like in my case, look at official documents and question them. You know if a dad has appeared on a marriage certificate and you're not quite sure who it is, you know, when you do a bit more of the family tree you might find out, as in what I found out this week, it was actually a grandfather and not a father at all. Then obviously DNA is probably the most obvious, as Paul mentioned, because we lose DNAs when you go back. So obviously we get 50% from mom and dad and then 25%, and then it's getting less and less and less. It is quite difficult to use DNA to find, for example, a great, great, great grandfather, and that is just because of the DNAs obviously getting less and less, and it just does prove quite problematic, not impossible. It would just take you a bit more time. That's all Paul has obviously revealed today about the shock I know he's spoken about before, but I've been 64 finding out that his dad was not his biological father and also how he used DNA to solve that.
Speaker 1:Now, if you're listening to this and you have got an illegitimate ancestor and you have managed to crack it and find out who the biological father is, yeah, so get in touch. If you have managed to crack and find those illegitimates, the fathers of those illegitimate children, please get in touch. I've got it actually, because my granddad's half sister we don't know who her dad was and unfortunately she never married. It's a really sad story actually. I think she was engaged once in about the 1920s and whatever happened? They never got married and she never had another man after that. That was just it. She lived a life on her own and sadly she's passed away and she's got no children, so there's nobody. I can DNA test to find out who Antithelma's dad is, but yeah, dna just came a bit too late for us, I think, in that regard.
Speaker 2:Just one more thing if I go missing after the 12th of October, it's because I'm doing a chat at NaO, which is the National Association of Retired Police Officers.
Speaker 1:So I'm doing a chat today.
Speaker 2:we've got to carry in a beer afters I've been promised, so that's quite good. I'm just hoping it's not a sting and they're trying to get me in there so that they can get me for all my past misdemeanors. Who knows?
Speaker 1:Listen, I'm tipping them off. I'm tipping them off. I'll be ringing up Crime Stoppers. The week before, paul, I'll be spilling the beans.
Speaker 2:He was the one that we caught with the London Metropolitan Archives at four in the morning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was him. Yes, Thank you so much folks for listening Really really appreciate it. Honestly, every week I say this I'm still surprised by how many people are tuning in. We get more and more people every week from all over the world, so thank you very, very much. If there's a topic we haven't spoke about that you want to talk about, I know one of our listeners got in touch with me and said she'd love to hear something on the asylum, which I will be doing in the next few weeks. I'm hoping to get in by the end of September, getting touch. So if there's something we haven't spoke about, getting touch and we will be sure to speak about it. Have a fantastic week researching. Hopefully we'll give you a bit of inspiration and don't get too downhearted if you come across an illegitimate ancestor. Hannah, I shall see you again next week. Take care.
Speaker 2:Bye MUSIC.