It's a few months since we launched our Find the Father service, where we try to identify the father of children where he's not named on the child's birth or baptism entry. In that time, we've searched through literally thousands of baptisms, most of which noted both parents. However, many of these indicated in one way or another that the parents were not, in fact, married. Some of these are fairly obvious, but some are not so obvious, so we thought we'd list them.
Some phrases or markings in registers definitely show that the parents aren't married, while others may just be hinting as much. The following phrases/abbreviations are unambiguous:
Other phrases or markings are less clear - they may or may not indicate that the parents are unmarried:
One important and unusual characteristic of Scots law which distinguishes it from English law is the concept of legitimisation. A child born out of wedlock whose parents subsequently marry becomes legitimate provided that his or her parents were free to marry at the time of his or her birth. In the first twenty years of civil registration in Scotland, around 140,000 children were born with no father named on their birth certificates. Our initial research suggests that at least one in three of these fathers can be identified from various historical records. If you have an illegitimate Scottish ancestor in your family tree, why not try our no-win, no-fee Find the Father service to see if your ancestor is one of them?
7 Comments
Dian Coulthard
19/4/2017 02:57:27 pm
In my family's case the child's was given the fathers last name for its middle name when the parents were unmarried
Reply
19/4/2017 07:50:03 pm
Yes, that's quite a common practice. I suspect it may have been a way of shaming a recalcitrant father. It's a handy clue if the surname/middle name is not a family name on the mother's side, but it's not always the father's surname.
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DM Walsh
29/4/2017 01:20:03 pm
Brilliant idea
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2/5/2017 01:51:38 pm
Thanks, glad you appreciate it. We've reviewed tens of thousands of baptisms in recent months, and it seemed that a list of the indicators might be of interest to other researchers.
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Donna
21/6/2017 12:47:42 am
We could not find a record of my grandparents marraige. We did find a divorce decree for my grandmother and a former husband we were unaware of. The divorce was 15 years after my grandparents started life together and after the birth of all their children. I don't think they ever married but they were together until death. She took his name as did all the children.
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21/6/2017 11:05:19 am
In the past, divorce was of course time consuming and relatively expensive. But another interesting feature of Scots law is that you are free to use more or less any name you choose, provided there is no fraudulent intent. There is no real equivalent of the English deed poll to formalise a change of name, although it is possible to record a name change at a later date on your birth registration through the Register of Corrected Entries system. We've seen instances of this happening more than 50 years after birth.
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Dennis L Maeder
3/2/2023 05:14:42 am
It should be mentioned that an L. son or L. dau. was Legitimate.
Reply
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