Forgotten people, assumed names, secrets and mysteries

[BigPantsOnFire]

I apologise in advance for what may be a slightly odd post; I have been mulling over several connected things over the last few days and so rather than there being one specific story or topic, I'm looking to have more of a wide ranging discussion with anyone who is interested- and possibly hear similar stories.

The other day, I was poking around on one of genealogy sites, having forked out for a month's subscription. Once I had looked at my own family for a bit, I got bored and found myself wondering what I could look into next.

So I thought of Robin. Growing up, my father had a friend he had met when he was at University who used to come and stay with us. He was an oddball, and the joke in my family was that if you dared to mention his name, he would telephone within the day and come for a visit. He never gave away any details about where he lived, or if he had any sort of personal life, or extended family. There was always some sort of eccentric mission that would explain his need to visit the area. We knew his name, and we had a very brief back story (from a vaguely aristocratic line, his father was a vicar with a private 'living' on an estate somewhere in England, where he had grown up).

The last contact we had with him was around the time that my father was dying in 2009. Unfortunately, he rang repeatedly and badgered my mother- telling her that she had to take him to a specific specialist who he had researched. She ended up yelling at him and hanging up.
We never had any way of contacting him, aside from a 'mail drop' sort of situation, care of the University that he still had a link to.

Anyway. I had always been curious about him- and his name was so unusual that I thought that it would be extremely easy to find him or his aristocratic family on the genealogy site.

But there was no result for that name: or, there was, for a different spelling, but only one- for a wedding. I knew he had been married once, and all the other details fit, so I searched with the new spelling. Still nothing. Idly, I searched the Web in general- and got a hit in a Guardian article.

It turned out, he had died in a nursing home in the city I was living at the time. Not only that- the entire premise of the story was that when he had died, the home had discovered that he was living under an assumed name- a different one to the one we knew. The police were called in to establish his identity. Eventually, they were able to do so. It turned out that he was actually from Italy, and had fled with his mother in 1939. His father stayed behind and died in Auschwitz. (Before that, his mother remarried- one could assume that she thought he was already dead).

My DH remarked that he thought that a lot of people reinvented themselves in order to deal with the trauma of WW2. I think he's probably right- and of course in those days and until very recently there were far fewer ways to be found out. In a wider sense, I can't help thinking about all the people who live on only in random anecdotes (we have a couple in my family that probably date back to the 1880s that I might be the last to tell, for example). Genealogy sites really only give you the basics- and so much falls between the cracks, so how can you possibly ever really know who someone was?

I would be fascinated to hear any similar stories, if you have them- or even your random crazy family stories that will be forgotten after you.

@nyoman
It's possible the children stayed in Australia to have a chance of a better future. There was a very bad depression in Britain in the 1930s and many people were desperately poor.

My grandmother had an uncle who had emigrated to Australia and done well for himself. On a visit back home in the 1930s when he saw how bad things were in Britain he arranged for 2 of her teenage brothers to go out there and he helped set them up. We have family photos of them but my Grandma never saw them again.

Once when my mum was in her 30’s she and her sisters were out to lunch with my grandmother and her sister when my gran suddenly said “I wondered what ever happened to Dolly.”

Turned out that Dolly was an older sister who had fallen pregnant out of wedlock and had been sent away to a home for unwed mothers and was never seen or heard of again. As they were a family of 11 children she was obviously much older than the younger ones, and because of the sheer number of them she essentially just left the family and never came back.

To this day no-one knows what happened to her.

@nyoman

When I looked into my father's family tree, I discovered that my grandfather, a widower with two children had emigrated to Australia in the 1920s. Early 1930s he was back in Britain, getting married (to my GM) with no children in sight I have no idea what became of them.

Sadly, they probably died and he came back home.

A lot of people didn't survive the passage to Australia and life over there was very tough for some people.

@HollowTalk I have to think it was something like that, as the idea of leaving two children under age 10 on the other side of the world is quite horrendous to me, even if life may have been a little easier over there as @3beesinmybonnet suggests.

@AlternativePerspective

Once when my mum was in her 30’s she and her sisters were out to lunch with my grandmother and her sister when my gran suddenly said “I wondered what ever happened to Dolly.”

Turned out that Dolly was an older sister who had fallen pregnant out of wedlock and had been sent away to a home for unwed mothers and was never seen or heard of again. As they were a family of 11 children she was obviously much older than the younger ones, and because of the sheer number of them she essentially just left the family and never came back.

To this day no-one knows what happened to her.

How strange - was the gran Dolly’s mother? She didn’t sound too bothered. If I was Dolly I’d probably have run a mile too, poor girl.

@Coronawireless I read that as meaning that Dolly was her big sister- so the OP's great aunt?

This reminds me of being shown around an assisted living kind of place which had formerly been an institution, and hearing that there were (or had been) women there for many years who had originally come as unwed mothers and then ended up institutionalised and never left. And, just as awful- there were women, often with learning disabilities, who became pregnant at the institution. I believe that is was suggested that some of these children remained there as well. It sounded to me like there had been some very creepy stuff going on there, which I imagine had all been hushed up.

This is fascinating I don't have a story as such except that many many years ago I was led to believe that there was a possibility that I wasn't my parents full biological child. I realise now that this information was corrupted by a misunderstanding over something that did take place, but I literally tormented myself for YEARS that I might be a secret illegitimate child, and it was only the DNA testing that ruled it out for me after it played on my mind so much, so I'm quite glad they exist.

We started researching our family tree once my GF had died - we knew he wasn't our biological GF so that wasn't a surprise. What was a surprise was everything else before that. Complicated doesn't cover it. Bigamy, adoption, murder - honestly it was seriously interesting. Too complicated to write it down onto a family tree - crazy!

My great grandfather was Chilean and turned up in Liverpool in 1918 and married my great grandmother who was in her early 20s. We don't know if the name he used was his real name especially as he only used one surname when 2 is the norm n Chile. He claimed a link to various Chilean admirals which we don't know if it is true, although there was an Admiral with one of the surnames. My aunts and mother have done Ancestry DNA tests which shows their DNA has around 1/8th indigenous Chilean heritage and we have some distant cousin matches ut beyond that it's all a mystery. We don't know if it was his real name, if he had a wife and children back Chile, an unmarried man in his mid 30s would have been unusual. He went on to have 13 children with my great grandma and 7 lived to adulthood.
He said he was from Val Paraiso but we don't know if that's true either. It's just this big mystery to us all. He told my great grandmother he fled after he threw a man overboard whilst in harbour. Is this true? No idea...

@SydneyCarton

My great-grandmother was married to another man before she married my great-grandfather (there's no record of a divorce and her first husband died years after she did, so technically she was a bigamist). She had a child from the first marriage, who no one knew about and no one remembers - he wasn't brought up with my grandmother as a half-sibling, nor could I find any record of him apart from his birth certificate.

I've always wondered what happened to him - I assume it was some sort of informal adoption, as he doesn't seem to have stayed with his father either. I'm hoping the 1921 census might show something - he would have been about 4 then, and possibly still with either one of his parents

There was no legal framework for adoption in England until 1926 and it was 1929 in Northern Ireland and 1930 in Scotland.

Before that, babies/ children were just taken into their new family. Babies adopted at birth eg by a childless couple would just eg registered as the child of the biological mother and the husband of the couple and given his surname.

One of my relatives was brought up by her maternal Gp who she believed to be her parents . They changed her surname to theirs but of course it wasn’t changed on her BC.

During the War she was supposed to be evacuated with her school but they didn’t send her because she / the school would have seen that the name on her ration card was different. So she was sent to stay with family members in the country.

She only discovered they were her GP when she has to apply for her own birth certificate to get married.

@BigPantsOnFire I had exactly the same experience when viewing a care home for DF. There were two elderly ladies who had been there most of their adult lives. They did not seem to have any mental or physical disabilities as I chatted to them quite a while. The manager introduced them to me I think because she knew they would talk positively about the place (it was the only care home I viewed which was keen to attract residents-all the others were difficult to get into). I was terribly sad for them because they seemed to be happy locked in a place that was really grim, they seemed to be institutionalised. I have never forgotten them. I assumed they were inconvenient women of some kind.

When researching the history of my house (and my DMs house) through the census and street directories I have found numerous records of children living with people unrelated (or distantly) to them. In fact there were very few instances of what we think of as a nuclear family until after the 2nd world war.

I tried to research my family tree. Mother won't talk about it and not in contact with datjer,looking up purely for medical type reasons to see if there was any 'history' as such.
Anyway. I can't find my father. I know his name and location. I know addresses. I used to have contact when i was a child. Cannot find him listed anywhere, even though my mother is. Cannot find a marriage certificate, or divorce. Nothing. He literally doesn't exist.

He literally doesn't exist

He will have been known by a different name than his given name. Your DM may know this, and may know the reason.

Lots of people have a different formal name from the one they are known by, for perfectly innocent reasons. Eg it was common for boys to be given the same name as their father but then be know by a different name for everyday purposes.

Welsh, Irish and Scottish people are often known by their name in their own language but their name is registered in English.

People with German names who lived in the UK during the War often anglicised them.

Battytwatty, you're very welcome,

DH's GGM came from Plymouth, but married a Manc lad (GGF) who was in the Marines based nearby; he deserted and they duly moved to Manchester. They had to children who died under one year old. By the time their third child is born, GGF has changed his name entirely and GGM has changed her surname to match, still living at the same address though.

We think he may have changed his name because his desertion would have flagged during conscription for WW1. The name he chose was that of GGM's BIL (her sister's husband), who was still alive and living in Plymouth. Not living an exemplary life as it turned out, he was admonished but not imprisoned for his part in the death of a work colleague! But maybe that still gave a better background than naval desertion ....

This was all a suspicion and a catalog of coincidences until I persuaded DH to have his DNA researched (for another reason) and links to the family in his GGF's former name were proven

@TheYearOfSmallThings

He literally doesn't exist

He will have been known by a different name than his given name. Your DM may know this, and may know the reason.

Yes but I can't find their marriage certificate either.

I have googled as well and he appears in publications, on social media etc. All very strange.

Yes but I can't find their marriage certificate either.

Possibly they could not legally marry?

A lot of the boys in my paternal family were given the same first name, but known by different names to avoid confusion. Large families each with 10+ children of whome 1-3 boys had the same name leads to a lot of confusion and we're still trying to find out about 2 of the boys. One was murdered and one was sent to Australia, likely under the child migrant scheme which explains why his record disappear so soon.
(They had the same name because a lot of the children died in infancy, and their names were used again on the next boy)

I also have 2 distant great aunts who were in mother and baby homes in Ireland, but one disappears 2 years after going there (No birth certif or marriage/death certif. and the other aunt's death cert. is dated 4 months before she was admitted to the home. It's all very confusing, and nothing adds up. Either a mix up of paperwork or something to do with the corruption of the homes.

Very interesting thread op.

There’s a really interesting book called “The Fiddler on Pantico Run” by Joe Mozingo, who had always believed his surname was Italian or Spanish. It turns out that it’s one of the tiny handful of African surnames that survived the transatlantic slave trade. Really fascinating stuff.
One of my parents families is Liverpool Irish, it’s really interesting to see how complicated families were back in the 19th early 20th century, particularly concerning children born out of wedlock, as well as more serious urban problems like crime and general dysfunction. Sometimes I’m astonished when I watch “Who do you think you are” by how boring some people’s family histories appear. Of course they’re no doubt not boring, just that they had sufficient money and investment in their social standing to hide it much better.

@Palmfrond

There’s a really interesting book called “The Fiddler on Pantico Run” by Joe Mozingo, who had always believed his surname was Italian or Spanish. It turns out that it’s one of the tiny handful of African surnames that survived the transatlantic slave trade. Really fascinating stuff. One of my parents families is Liverpool Irish, it’s really interesting to see how complicated families were back in the 19th early 20th century, particularly concerning children born out of wedlock, as well as more serious urban problems like crime and general dysfunction. Sometimes I’m astonished when I watch “Who do you think you are” by how boring some people’s family histories appear. Of course they’re no doubt not boring, just that they had sufficient money and investment in their social standing to hide it much better.

I’ve always wondered about the behind the scenes stuff for WDYTYA — I mean, they presumably need to do some initial research before signing on the celebrity, or there might not be enough information or interest in their family tree to warrant a programme, but presumably then don’t pursue family histories that are too juicy either — I mean, it’s one thing to discover your great-great-great grandfather was a highwayman, but another to discover that your grandad was a Blackshirt, or your mother was a reformed gangster’s moll. Or that your father isn’t who you think he is.

You’re no doubt right, but in this day and age you’d think that people would be more understanding, as well as it making more interesting TV.
I think an uncomfortable reality concerning WDYTYA (thanks for the acronym btw!) is the degree to which -many- of our celebrities are still the product of inherited privilege. And I use that term relatively; My grandmother used to speak with great pity and sadness about “the poor” as she remembered them from her youth, despite growing up the child of a single mother in a two room tenement during the 1920s!

My gran got pregnant with my dad at 15. My grandad was 22, and an arsehole who was determined to do nothing to support her or his child. Her family threw her out. Eventually my grandad’s parents helped her, and adopted my dad formally.

Gran spent some time waitressing - bear in mind how very young she still was - then met an American man and emigrated to marry him. His parents were apparently very straitlaced and would never have approved of an unmarried mother. Gran still wrote occasionally to my dad, and when he was 11 and she was 26, said that she was about to be operated on for a rare cancer and her chances of survival were low. She never wrote again so naturally everyone assumed she had died.

Decades later my brother was getting life insurance and was worrying about this aggressive cancer that had taken the life of a young woman. He did some research to find out whether the records would state what kind of cancer it was.

Imagine our surprise when it turned out that, far from dying tragically young of cancer in 1961, Gran had had three more children (the first was born around that time), divorced and remarried twice more, been blessed with a sheaf of grandchildren, and lived till 2014. We don’t know whether she ever had cancer at all - perhaps she just preferred to forget her difficult early life. My dad now regularly writes to one of his newly discovered sisters, who said, on finding out that she had a brother, “it’s not really surprising, it’s the sort of thing she would do.” Which frankly raises more questions than it answers.