Those Bastards-The Wrongside of the sheets.
Records don’t always get so blunt as in the 1700s, when they tended to term the children as bastards. But every family has them and they represent difficulties for the genealogist. So just how do you go about accounting for those ancestors and relatives who don’t quite fit into the accepted scheme of things. Do enough family history, and you will find them in your tree, maybe not an ancestor, but one of their siblings, if you just dig enough. Often, the hint that a child preceded a marriage, or was born to a woman who never married, develops as a last resort when looking to extend a genealogy backward. One example I found was was trying to place Hiram Buchanan, born, ca. 1840 from what I originally knew. He lived in 1850 in the household of Isaac and Edna Conner and in 1860 with Edna’s daughter Charlotte Buchanan Tague. Now, Edna had been married first to William Buchanan 1801-1833, son of Wilson Buchanan. But Wilson’s estate was clear in stating that Edna’s children were Henry Buchanan, Charlotte, and Edna. Besides, Hiram was obviously born after William had died. Apprentice records pointed to the obvious conclusion. Edna Conner apprenticed Hiram Buchanan in 1850 and calls him “My son,” giving his birth date as May 4, 1840. Put the pieces together, and you come up with no known father for Hiram. This typifies the kind of deduction that you face on such lines. Once in a while you get a candid tombstone inscription. The transcriptions of the Bramberger cemetery in Milton Township. Individual tombstones list Richard Brumbarger and Louis Brumbarger as son of Mary and Richard Brambarger as son of Sarah. It may have been an interesting family, Sarah and Mary were probably sisters and the records of the Milton Baptist Church show Sarah was expelled on the Third Saturday of February 1857 for Pregnance. (I mentioned this name once about five years ago and my mother said, “I’d heard about her.” Talk about not being able to shake a reputation.) Another indicator is finding an young child in a grandparent’s household, who doesn’t quite seem to belong to any of the grandparent’s children. For example, I puzzled long over Gazelle, age 6, who lived in1880 with William and Mary Scott in Milton Township. She seemed to young to be a child. I presumed her to be a granddaughter, but I couldn’t place her. The records of Caledonia Presbyterian Church list Rebecca Scott as her mother when Gazelle was received on Apr. 18, 1890. Rebecca was William and Mary’s daughter and was later to marry an Ashby. But Gazelle came along a bit fore that. Death certificates are also an indication. Within the same neighborhood, there was a John Buchanan, 1843-1916, whose parentage has been ascribed to different men. Except he doesn’t really seem to fit. His obituary does not record the name of parents and his death certificate lists his father’s name as unknown. Was he born out of Wedlock? Maybe. It’s not any one fact that points that direction, it’s the combination of these things. He lived One great historical example came in the Boone family. Daniel Boone came home from breaking trails in Kentucky to have his wife Rebecca present him with a bouncing baby. Boone had been gone for two years. One account credits fatherhood to his brother Squire Boone and indicates that this little episode doesn’t seem to have interfered with the couple’s relationship. There are periods in which there were more illegitimacies. Before the Civil War, there was a phenomenon known as the camp meeting babies. Histories say that the fervor of the revival boiled over into passion as couples left camp meetings, and I’ve read accounts where observers report having trouble making their way through the bushes because of all the couples. (I’m just reporting what happened, I am not making any judgments about morality.) There was also a loosening of inhibitions in the 1920s that led both to out-of-wedlock babies and a spike in sexually transmitted diseases. Copyright by Robert W. Scott, 2002.
Jefferson County INGenWeb.
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