Births

[wendyandrews]

I will, definitely, and thank you all for your help and suggestions up until now.

[coombs]

Quite often I have 2 cousins born close together and if they are both girls or boys, then their fathers who were siblings would give them both the same forename. It has lead to many headaches sorting either of the 2 out.

Looks like that your 2 Jemima's were cousins if it is confirmed that Frances Ann Smith was Joseph's sister.

[wendyandrews]

Well, the cert has come already, and now I'm even more confused than before. So the cert I already had was numbered 21, 5th May 1885, no address given, just Wingate R. S. D, Jemima Smith, mother:Frances Ann Smith, no father named, registered on 2nd June 1885, informant F. A. Smith, mother.
This new one is numbered 20, born 5th May 1885, Wingate R. S. D, Jemima Smith, mother:Eliza Smith formerly Morris, father Joseph Smith, coal miner, dated 2nd June 1885. Same registrar on both.
What on earth can I deduce from this??
Also of note is that I share 115cM of DNA with a cousin related through Eliza Morris's brother, and my mum 188cM, just to give you all the facts.
Thoughts welcomed 😁

[wendyandrews]

P. S. Informant on second. Eliza Smith, mother

[Ruskie]

Eliza Morris and Joseph Smith had a daughter called Jemima born 5 May 1885.
Unmarried Frances Smith had a daughter on the same day, and called her Jemima as well.

Frances and Joseph are brother/sister or cousins perhaps?

The parents of both daughters went to register the babies together, so one is number 20 in the register and the other is number 21.

Just an initial thought with the possibility of having missed some previous points mentioned in the thread (as I did not re-read it). 

[Andrew Tarr]

What on earth can I deduce from this??
Also of note is that I share 115cM of DNA with a cousin related through Eliza Morris's brother, and my mum 188cM, just to give you all the facts.
Thoughts welcomed 😁

Well, it does look like a very unlikely coincidence of name and date, there are too many differences for it to be two versions of the same birth.  You may just have to forget about being descended from an unknown father 

[wendyandrews]

Andrew, that's what I was hoping to hear, it's preferable for it to be two different babies. Is just odd that I can find no furthur trace of the 'wrong' Jemima. I am inclined to think that the wrong one is still related to me through Frances, Joseph's sister.
Merry Christmas.

[Andrew Tarr]

Unless it is the same baby and there was some sort of tug of war occurring, with two registrations and two baptisms!  I hope not though, it's easier to think there are two babies!

Just to illustrate the improbability of the two-babies scenario:  there were 4 Jemima Smiths registered in England & Wales in the whole of 1885, so the chance of two of them appearing on the same day (1 in 365) in just one part of the same district (how many? - 1000?) is approaching one in a million.

Happy Christmas to all too ....

[andrewalston]

It's possible that Frances Ann Smith went on to marry, and her Jemima was brought up using her (step)father's surname, and so disappears from obvious sight.

I have such a scenario in my own tree. My great grandfather reverted to his birth surname when he married; his brother stuck with the stepfather's surname.