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?