Unknown parents

[User280905]

Finally tracked down the marriage certificate of an elusive ancestor. He was married in 1871 in Scotland but has put unknown for both parents.
I can't find a birth certificate for him anywhere in the UK. Surely you would have a birth certificate even if you didn't know who your parents were? Would he be in an orphanage or something? Or would his birth just not be registered?

We've been researching our family tree a lot recently and usually everything is quite boring and straight forward. This is the most curious person I've found so far.

Civil registration of births only started in 1855 in Scotland. So unless he was very young when he married his birth was probably never registered.

If he was baptised then he may appear in the parish records, but you'd have to have some idea of which parishes to search in.

Yeah, I suspect this might be a dead end, which is a bit of a shame. It is a fairly unusual surname but I can't find anything likely in any of the registers. He could have come from anywhere in the world I suppose.

Oh well.

Unlikely he registered. It's annoying. We have one link that's not substantiated but a member of the family from the other side believes the link and has their/out geneology linked back to 1071!

Also a Scottish link. If we can prove the link it turns out we're French... and aristocracy who came over with William the Conquerer. Once owned Bamborough Castle too

Can you locate him on censuses? That should give you a place of birth and approx year.

His birth may be registered under an entirely different name.

Have you tried looking at the censuses prior to his marriage? If it is an unusual surname, have a look all instances of it, and see whether anything makes sense. I'm not sure whether Scottish marriage certificates have the witnesses' names on, but if they are, then do some research on them too as they can often be cousins or related by marriage somehow.

Where did the marriage take place? If it was in a church or chapel then you could maybe have a look at their records for all instances of the surname.

What information has he given on his marriage certificate? Place of birth? Who are the witnesses - these are often family members. Informal adoption was very common before the 1920s when the law was written, children would be taken in by aunts or cousins or other family members and raised as their own. But in my experience the child's first name was usually respected, the adopted family just gave their surname.

Agree that pre-1855 you won't find a birth certificate in Scotland, and quite possibly not a baptism either. And England's a big place to start looking without any clues.

DNA might help in this situation but trying to identify unknown parents so far back is going to involve lots of very distant cousins and a massive tree. Not impossible, but very time consuming.

What does the 1861 census tell you. He should be in it, even if he's in the workhouse.