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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: dragonT on Friday 16 September 22 20:00 BST (UK)

Title: Birth Certificate query
Post by: dragonT on Friday 16 September 22 20:00 BST (UK)
Am I right to think that, if a married couple (in about 1920) have a child and before the mother registers the child's birth the father has died, the father's name will still be entered on the birth certificate?
Title: Re: Birth Certificate query
Post by: Cas (stallc) on Friday 16 September 22 20:25 BST (UK)
I would think if he was her husband and father of child then he should be named on cert. Deceased or not.

Cas
Title: Re: Birth Certificate query
Post by: Jebber on Friday 16 September 22 20:46 BST (UK)
Short answer. YES
Title: Re: Birth Certificate query
Post by: chris_49 on Saturday 17 September 22 07:22 BST (UK)
Yes, why ever not?

Is there some context to this - do you suspect that he was not the father?

My great-grandmother was born a couple of years after her mother's husband's death, and no father is named on the cert. Yet, to anyone innocently searching the indexes, the different mother's maiden surname would lead them to assume that she was legitimate?

Title: Re: Birth Certificate query
Post by: dragonT on Saturday 17 September 22 10:01 BST (UK)
I suspect he was not the father as he is not mentioned on the certificate. And because the mother subsequently had a number of children with a second man. The first child believed the second man was his father until he saw a copy of his birth certificate.
Title: Re: Birth Certificate query
Post by: chris_49 on Saturday 17 September 22 10:29 BST (UK)
Ah! So the other guy is a suspect, or she may have been unsure about who was the father!

As well as my g-grandma, there's another suspicious birth in my tree. I may have to send for the cert.
Title: Re: Birth Certificate query
Post by: ALAMO2008 on Saturday 17 September 22 15:15 BST (UK)
I have a Relative baby Robert McKay born and Father's Name is on the Birth Certificate and Noted that the Father was Deceased
Only problems to that Certificate are - The Deceased Father named died 10 years previously - I have his Death Certificate and Inquest

The Baby couldn't be Baptised as McKay because the Priest no doubt remembered Marrying her 8 years previously to a Mariner named Redmond so Baptised the Baby as Robert Redmond.

Sadly the Baby died a few weeks later but was Buried as Robert McKay per Birth Certificate not Baptism Name

His Elder Brother Daniel Registered late in August for Birth so his Birth Date was invented as 30 June on 42nd deadline date as his Birth.

However the Priest Baptised the Baby 20 May and noted the Baptism Consecutive Log the Real Date of Birth 10 May

Thus showing the Lesson for Researchers  :-

History and Certificates are NOT A Record of the Truth
But are a Record of what People "SAID"
Which may NOT be the Truth

 
Title: Re: Birth Certificate query
Post by: chris_49 on Saturday 17 September 22 17:26 BST (UK)

History and Certificates are NOT A Record of the Truth
But are a Record of what People "SAID"
Which may NOT be the Truth

Agreed. So now to the five known untruths on the said great-grandmother's marriage certificate (two age lies, two address lies and an imaginary father) must be added a probable unconcious lie (she thought the man who brought her up was her father).
Title: Re: Birth Certificate query
Post by: iolaus on Monday 19 September 22 20:25 BST (UK)
My husband greatgrandmother's father died 4 months prior to her birth - on her birth certificate it has his name, occupation and deceased written next to it

One of my ancestors has her ?mother's? husband name on her birth certificate - 4 years after he died with no mention of deceased (the ? is there because it's believed she's actually the daughter of her 19 year old 'sister' as the sister then has her living on the following censuses as her daughter, rather than with the legal mother and her other children