It should have been easy.
We had his Pip, Squeak & Wilfred WWI medals, with name, regiments, ranks and numbers.
We found Grandmother's birth certificate so were able to obtain their marriage certificate & Granddad's death certificate. Ridiculously young at 30 from TB.
From there it was simple, only 1700 possible granddads!
While I was engaged on my frustrating search, Jeff, an experience genealogist, was looking for his wife's Grandmother.
He chanced upon my research and found that my Granddad and Mary's Grandma had been married within 2 months from the same address with the same father. Progress.
He also found that in the 1901 census, Granddad was 4 years old, had been born in Leicestershire and at last his mother's name.
So why no evidence of his birth? There was a hefty fine for not registering. Could he be (bated breath) illegitimate?
Advance to 2012 and mother's death which started this search and made me wonder why Grandmother had never spoken about her first husband and even more, why had WE never asked her.
We learnt where Granddad was buried and that Mother's sister was buried in the same grave.
We couldn't inter Mother's ashes on the anniversary of her death or her funeral, so we pulled a date out of the ether.
A few days before the chosen date, I finally received Granddad's birth certificate. He was indeed illegitimate, born in a Workhouse with a totally different name. This baby never married or died. Shortly after the birth, my Greatgrands married and it seems my Granddad was “renamed” after his presumed father.
We took mother to join her father & sister on May 22.
My Granddad was born in 1896, that's right - May 22 .
Happy Birthday, Granddad.
Doggie mummy living in ancient York, Yorkshire, England.
Joined 1st Jan 2018
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OK, I got chill bumps all over me. So many stories like that back then. You did a great job of tracking it all down. That is the really amazing part!! You are a good detective, Jesika!
@stownsend Thank you, Suzie, but I cannot claim the accolades. Jeff did the hard work and he's uncovered thousands of family links around the world going back centuries. All I wanted was to be able to say "Happy birthday, Granddad."
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@fbailey Isn't it just? Thank goodness for Mary's Gran! But how odd that she was being researched at the same time I decided I needed to know about this mystery man. My cousin had tried years ago, long before the internet had made it easy(er) and she would have been working from an incorrect base, as I did initially.
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