To ignore what I’ve found out.

[CD41]

Posting here for traffic. Decided to research my family tree. I’ve tried before and didn’t have enough time so thought lockdown might be perfect.

I already have a lot of info on my maternal grandmothers side but nothing on my maternal grandfathers side. I was incredibly close to my grandad. He only died a couple months ago but he didn’t talk about his family much.

So tonight I was doing some basic searching on ancestry. I learnt that my grandads mum and dad got married 8 months before he as born. Maybe it’s because she was pregnant? Who knows.

Doesn’t sound too bad but my grandad has a brother 5 years older than him who I always assumed to have the same father as they share the same name. I then discovered that my grandads dad appeared to be married until maybe 18 months before he was born. I never knew he had a first wife. It also means that he would have been married to first wife when my great uncle (still alive and in his 80’s) was born so likely not his dad after all unless it was an affair at first. It appears my grandads dads first wife died young. It didn’t seem likely they had children.

I tried finding my great uncles birth registration. It appears that his name was changed from his mother’s maiden name to my grandads surname. But obviously without seeing the birth certificate no idea who great uncles father is.

Bearing in mind my grandads dad died when he was very young and he cannot really remember him. It would also make sense as my grandad had the same name as his dad. Surely a first born son would take the name? Not the second? I had never even thought of that way before.

Now aibu to not say anything? I assume if my grandad did know he didn’t tell anyone or he may have just told my granny and they kept it quiet. Or maybe he didn’t know..

I guess nothing has changed for my grandad. His mum and dad were his parents regardless but it’s his brother who maybe lived a lie and they were in fact half brothers (I don’t think that makes any difference, my children have different fathers but consider them just brother and sister not half of anything).

They also had another older brother who their mum had really young.

Shall I just keep quiet? I worry if I tell my mum she’ll just go telling everyone and it’s probably not the right thing to do right now.

Aibu to keep it to myself?

Speaking from experience, 'let sleeping dogs lie.'

Yes It'd be easier to just let the past stay in the past.

Keep it to yourself. Your uncle had a dad, brother and mum who loved him.

My DH did a bit of research on his family. He found out about births before the couple were married, names changed by deed poll to cover this up, all sorts of odd little things. He didn’t raise it with the relatives concerned because they have never mentioned it and at the time, it would have been ‘shameful’.

What difference would it make?

Who would benefit from the truth?

Gosh, of course keep schtum. Something that strikes you as ‘mildly interesting family history fact’ could spell shame and heartbreak for an older family member.

My mother (mid-70s) was devastated when she found out (after both her parents died from papers left in the attic) that she’d had a stillborn elder brother who must have been conceived months before her parents married — to me, it explained why my grandmother had ‘married down’ (she was educated and expected to marry well, he was a much older, penniless farm labourer who already had two sons from his first marriage), but to my mother it was shameful.

Not long ago, 50 years back things were very different and society was nothing like it is today.
Families did what they had to do for live and to protect their children.
It would break your (now) elderly relatives hearts to expose it all now.
Please don't.

Thanks all. It just got me how his dad was married before. I assume no children as she died young and he would have been bringing them up too!

I won’t mention anything but it really fascinates me!

My grandads dad died when he was about 5 or 6.

I assume that even if they didn’t know they probably would have discovered something sorting through their mother’s belongings when she died. Birth certificates, marriage certificates, photos etc!

It’s strange because I don’t re call ever seeing a photo of my grandads family yet my loads of my granny’s side.

I don’t have my bio dad around or know the family so I don’t have to research his side thankfully!

The birth father ‘s name probably won’t be on the certificate anyway.

Family history really fascinates me I mean!

OP it’s very interesting for you to have discovered these things about your family, but don’t assume that you are the only person who knows.
Probably more people than you realise already know, including your grandad and all of his family.
Enjoy researching, but don’t feel you need to share everything you have «discovered «.
They may already know and have made their peace with it.
You would only be serving your own interests by bringing it up again.

Yes, I agree...but write it down somewhere for future reference, in case one of your descendants would like to know the truth.

You could ask your great uncle next time you see him (perhaps better face to face) if he has any memories of your grandad when they were young, and maybe see what comes out of that, he may not know if he was very young

in case one of your descendants would like to know the truth.

Seriously? Who the hell would want to know who exactly was their great great great grandfather? And why would they care?

I think a big problem of doing family genealogy is that so much of the context is lost, and all you see are bare documents which can be interpreted in many different ways - it leaves too much space for the imagination.

When my own grandfather was alive, his stories of the family helped guide my research, and he in turn was able to make sense of records I found that seemed anomalous. That experience made he see how much of the big picture is lost once the people who lived it are gone. There are lots of things that are talked about within families which are not necessarily seen as shameful but are private, or too trivial to put to paper, or which defy the categorisation of the time.

Like you say, you don't actually know the facts around your great uncle's birth: you just have one document that shows an unusual set-up. Speculating about it isn't going to get you anywhere, and to be honest after a point isn't any better than gossiping about the living. You don't know their truth and I think you need to make peace with the fact that you never will.

Yes keep quiet about it.

I found out some unexpected stuff about my family when researching the family tree, that a family member died in the 1960s not the 1930s as I'd been told. The sad part is I believe they were in an institution all that time and their children didn't know, and were told they'd died. It's really sad but there's nothing I can do with the information now.

My Nan who would be 105 now had 3/4 children out of wedlock as my granddad was already married. As his wife was in an alyssum he couldn’t divorce her. He had to adopt the older children once they were married. Times were different and so were attitudes.

made me* see

also, I think when we explore family records we are sort of looking for a bit of excitement - for scandal or mystery. It's not very interesting to confirm that Uncle Albert did indeed work at the bus depot for 40 years, you want evidence that he and Aunt Myrtle actually shagged a full two months before their wedding night. It can be quite unfair on the dead, who might have been doing odd things in a totally undramatic way.

A friends mother married a man who after the wedding took her home to his house where she found six children, he was a widower. She took it in her stride after the initial shock and went on to have her own children.

All the children were raised as her own. This was over 70 years ago.

I'm another person saying let sleeping dogs lie!

Things were so different back then. People lied and omitted to spare their children and themselves from being ostracised by shamers.

I found out that Gmil and Gfil 'became' married between leaving Ireland and arriving in England. They may have married on the boat but I doubt it. There was a lot of scandal, a wife in an asylum and an illegitimate child (Mil) who Gmil managed to keep when her parents let her come home from the nuns.
I don't know if older relatives knew they never really married but I'm not telling.

Another friend had a shock when her parents died to find she had an aunt one of seven children who had been locked away when she was three because she was not normal. She found the trust papers that had been set up for the child (wealthy parents) that only ended and was distributed upon her death. She was in her 80`s when she died.

My (very staunch catholic) mother found out that her parents had married only 4 months before her eldest sister was born. It was only discovered when a celebration was planned for my grandparents 50th wedding anniversary and they ordered a copy of the marriage certificate which showed they had only been married 49 years. Her initial thought was that an error had been made on the certificate . She was totally mortified.

It may seem interesting to you Op and it’s really cool that you’re delving into family history but there’s a reason this information isn’t common knowledge in your family already - somebody a long time ago didn’t want it to be.

I found out a similar thing OP. My mother was born nine months after her parents married. She had an older sister. Her sister’s father is not named on the birth certificate, and I can’t find a death certificate for my grandfather’s first wife, so I don’t know if he was still married at that point, and that is why he isn’t named, or if my aunt’s father was somebody else. I didn’t tell my mother as she was old and frail when I found out, and would have been very upset. Her sister had already died.
I think it is probably better not to tell, under the circumstances.