Should I drop a family history bombshell or just say nothing

[Blackberrypresse]

Ive been interested in family history and doing family trees etc for a while.

For Christmas I received a subscription to the British Newspaper Archives so I’ve spent hours happily searching family names.

DH family has an unusual name and the family had stayed all within a small area so it’s been easy to find newspaper articles.

I was very surprised then to find a newspaper article from 1911 about DH’s grandfather being called to court to pay for an illegitimate child he had fathered when he was about 18. It was as a female child (not named) although the mother was named. I’ve drawn a blank on the mother going forward and cannot find the child’s name.

He married quite a bit later in his late 20’s to DH’s grandmother and had his ‘real’ family.

I don’t know whether to say any of this to the wider family. DH’s aunt is still alive in her 80’s and I’m fairly sure she wouldn’t have known that she’d had a much older half sister.

DH is ambivalent about it all, he has no interest in family history and his grandfather died when he was young, he has no real recollection of him.

DH aunt is interested though and I’m torn as to whether to tell her or just let it pass. Her half sister would be probably long dead now but I do think there may be children of her and so a part of the family that we don’t know.

WWYD?

I'd leave it alone, your husband isn't bothered. If direct family members want to know their family history then the information is out there.

Sleeping dogs.

Not your family.

If the half sister is dead, what’s to be gained? No relationship to be built.

It’s just nosing about in other people’s families. Delayed gossip.

No. You told your DH, it's his call now.

My mum’s in her 80s she’d super interested to know she had a half sister. As the aunt is interested I’d sound her out first.

I'd tell her.

Exactly. Sound her out first and ask if in principle if she’d want to know or whether she’d rather leave the past behind.

I wouldn't be interested. But people are different. The news would mean little to me, so no harm. In contrast, I think it could be harmful to someone who cares about this stuff, so if she's interested, then far more potential for harm. I'd be inclined to leave well alone if she's happy in her life, or encourage her to find out for herself.

Arghh it’s a tricky one. I’m trying to work out whether, at 80+, I’d want to know that my dad had had a child before I was born. I think not, as there’s no way to ratify the story and most of the “cast” are long dead. It would probably just be bewildering for the aunt at that age.

We have uncovered a few family secrets, some are openly discussed (but cannot be solved without digging up bodies for DNA) but there is one I have to hold onto until a particular family member has passed away, it’d cause too much hurt to a really good person otherwise. Fascinating nevertheless.

I'd want to know if it was me. I don't know your aged aunt and how she might react though.

I would approach DH's aunt and say, "I've started doing the family history. If I found any unexpected relatives or skeletons, would you like to know or prefer not?"

I like this idea.
Although remember the reality may be different and what they thought they wanted to know, they really didn’t.

I would say the above or I would do some more digging and see if you can get any concrete evidence before approaching her.

If my SIL started investigating my family tree etc I would suggest she researches her own fecking family and piss off from meddling in mine (her husband's) tbh. Its fuck all to do with someone who has married into it.

I don't know how your regard your husband's family, OP, but I wouldn't have regarded my (now ex) husband's family as mine. It's his. And on that basis I would say nothing. If you've told him about your findings he can tell people 'guess what Blackberry's found out!' if he wants to.

However, many (if not most) families have secrets and they are often the sort of thing that would have meant scandal back in the day but now ... most people wouldn't be so shocked.

Meh. I’ve 2 half siblings I’ve never been told about (but found out about). I have no interest in opening a can of worms.

I agree.
I found out through family research and dna testing that my aunt was illegitimate, and my mother’s half sister rather than her full sister as we all thought. It made sense of some family relationships. I told my cousins, as it seemed wrong to keep it from them. My aunt is no longer alive so there wasn’t the dilemma of hurting her or giving her a shock. Had she been still living I am not sure how I would have proceeded actually.

I wouldn't. For her generation, and for someone who had the man summonsed to pay for his child as a parent, what you may think of as an amusing quirk in distant family history, may feel like a shameful, even shocking disclosure, changing her feelings about her father and her childhood.

I've had two instances of this in my own family history -- my mother found that her mother was pregnant with someone else's child (stillborn) when she married her father, grandfather discovered his parents weren't married (that in fact his father had another family elsewhere) when he went through some old papers looking for his birth cert when he needed a passport, and was shocked and really, really ashamed.

Some things are best left unknown! Trust me!

It might be nice for her to know perhaps there's more family still out there especially if the other child went onto have a family.

If the aunt wants to know her history (or any of the other family) warn them first that there may be things they weren't aware of before showing them the details. Otherwise say nothing.

I really wouldn’t.

DH aunt is interested though and I’m torn as to whether to tell her or just let it pass.

Interested in what though?

Where/how they lived, what jobs they did?

That's different to finding out that your dad fathered a kid as a teen & had to be taken to court to pay!

Would there have to have been pretty compelling evidence that he was the father I wonder?

I would test the water with the aunt first, as a few PP have suggested.

You don’t need to go near Ancestry to find out more - FreeBMD has birth records, so you could find the child’s name out that way. www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/search.pl

If you find a likely record, you’ll need to order the certificate from the GRO to confirm, though. There’s a charge, but it’s not a lot.

Is the outcome in the paper?

since there was no way to prove if he was the father, it could turn out that he was told to pay but the child wasn’t actually his.

It’s odd you can find no record anywhere of the mother.

I would say, leave it alone as you don’t actually know wether this child was his or not. I am sure Patrick Stewart had something very similar in his family. I think there was a question about who fathered his brother.

It’s personal isn’t it. Some want to know stuff, some don’t do it needs to be gauged on that.

I researched my fil as all we knew was that his father died when fil was a child.
we wanted to start a family and I needed to know if it was possibly a hereditary condition etc etc.
Not even mil knew the cause of death or anything about it. Fil never talked about it. But fil never talks about anything, ever so not unusual.

Anyway dh & mil agreed so I searched. It was tragic.
I got loads and loads of information and even photos of fils father. I showed him and talked briefly about it with him.
He said nothing. Looked at the pictures in silence. Closed the photo album and never said a word. Again, not unusual for fil.

The family wee fascinated by it all.

Agree with this. I’d probably leave well alone.