What made you fall into a black hole when finding out about your ancestors ?

[WinterBerry40]

Mine was on my mother's side in the mid 1800s a family with unusual names led to me deep diving into finding out as much as I can about them .

Names :
Thomas , Joshua ( my gg x times gf ) Ambrose , Emmanuel , Hercules ,Charity , Penella , Lendon , Joan .

I discovered they were travellers and had led lives ( and thanks to their names ) which were easily traceable with lots of info available .
They were quite well known in their area and even have things wrote about them in historical incidents .
My mum would have never known she came from traveller stock and I'm quite proud to have that in my family history .
Hello out there if these names are linked to your family also !

If you're, erm 'lucky' enough to come from a family like my mother's, @SunnySideUp30Plus , the British Newspaper Archive is very useful as they seemed to be frequent customers of the town Petty Sessions! My poor mother would have been mortified to have learned what I have about them, I think she would have had a sleepless night if she'd posted a letter without a stamp, yet her great uncle stood trial for attempted murder!

I started by using Ancestry but then you come across something difficult or unusual so you do some more digging and often local newspapers have reports featuring your more interesting family members.
Crime and court registers showed a great uncle who was imprisoned for the 'crime' of attempting suicide in 1908.
Local history web sites often have interesting stories.
Military records revealed my great grandad was a drunk who kept disappearing for days at a time.

Researching DP's family threw up newspaper reports of his grandfather's arrests for illegal gambling and violence in Birmingham, so a bit of a Peaky Blinder!

I have found a nurse just before the first World War who was found to have attended the births of babies born to unmarried mothers.

This was not allowed, and the hospital committee were extremely upset and angry at her midwifery assistance to fallen women whom did not deserve help, nor their babies during childbirth.

She was sacked as she refused to say she wouldn't help again. I very much wish i could find her, but she seems to have vanished into obscurity after that. Perhaps she went abroad to help.

@Another2Cats thank you for sharing those fascinating stories. You write so well! It's lovely that you've told the stories of people long forgotten, especially the sailor buried in Cape Verdes.

@Another2Cats helped me researching dh’s 3x grandfather and found out some very interesting details. 💐

One of my grandfathers was German. He won the iron cross in WW1. My other grandfather was a battle of Britain pilot and won the DFC. I honour both of them.

Thank you everyone for sharing the stories, they have been truly fascinating.

2 of my DH's GGGGrandfathers were fighting on opposite sides in the same Spanish battle. The French guy was high up the ranks, possibly a surgeon, and loads of historical info is recorded about him.

French guy was captured by the British, brought to the UK as a prisoner and managed to get a British girl pregnant (DH GGG Grandmother) he then ended up returning to his wife and kids back in France! Finally after all these years my school level French came in useful.

My mums dad wasn’t her dad. Her dad was a stranger to us. He had 8 kids to add onto mums existing 5 siblings by her mum.

DH's GGF was a burglar - there's a mugshot of him in a Scotland Yard circular of "Habitual Criminals".

Some of these would make excellent screenplays.

1920s. One female relative was working in a shop when she was 16. She got pregnant and married the shop owner who was 30. They went on to have 14 children between them, however not all of those children could possibly have been the shop owners as he was Greek and from a long line of Greek families. Photos show he looks very Greek / Mediterranean looking and looked like others in their family.
DNA matches from their children show zero Greek DNA or any DNA from that region. I wondered if her husband hadn’t known his biological father, but then Greek DNA from his mother would show up.
i would love to know her story, but it is lost to time.

Finding out my granddad who died when I was in my teens had another family and children at the same time he was with my grandma.

So much. Starting with a dna test which thre up a load of half cousins i didn’t know and realising my biological grandad wasn’t my grandad. Then tracing my actual grandads family tree which has a load of colourful ancestors.

And a great grandfather who had something like 16 kids by 4 different women. A half uncle who kidnapped the viscountess of devonport in the 70s and went to prison for it. Think he might still be alive, not sure.

I have also traced buildings through my ancestry , so it's amazing that doing your DNA can also sometimes put buildings lived in / owned by your ancestors and now owned by The National Trust into your knowledge .

Im still trying to work out why my paternal grandmother had a different surname from her birth name on her wedding certificate . Had she been married previously ? Changed name by deed poll? Cannot find anything in the records.

My dad did a fair bit of genealogy work in his long life. It was interesting rather than remarkable; the men in the family had owned a boatyard on the Humber estuary for 100 years. My gf was the first one to not take it on as he was slightly disabled from contracting flu from daily crossing the Humber in an open boat in all weathers. His parents died within weeks of each other as one caught flu at the other's funeral! I think we forget how devastating 'everyday' illnesses were.

What kind of travellers were they OP, if you don’t mind me asking g - Romany Gypsies?

Im still trying to work out why my paternal grandmother had a different surname from her birth name on her wedding certificate .

In my great-grandmother's case it was because her mother had remarried* and she had taken her stepfather's name and was married under that name. Then on my grandfather's birth cert she gave her birth name as her maiden name, so I was able to link them all up.

*I have never found the first marriage, so not sure there actually was one.

Was there a stepfather? My great-great grandmother seemed to have about three surnames. Her mother seems to have been married to a couple of men and also lived early on with her child's father out of wedlock. He gave her away when she married, so on her marriage certificate she has reverted to his name.

Thank you both, that is a good point, my great grandmother was relatively young widow so she could have remarried. I will look into this.

In addition to the previous replies about step-fathers, perhaps the simplest answer would be that she had previously been married.

If you have a look at the marriage certificate, does her father have the same surname as her birth name?

If so, then that is a pretty clear indication that she was married before.

After her husband's death, a woman would not typically change her name back to her maiden name, she would stay as her married name. So that would be the name recorded on a later wedding certificate.

The same still applies today. If Jane Doe marries John Smith and takes his name then she becomes Jane Smith. If John then dies, Jane is still Jane Smith unless she then changes her name by deed poll.

If Jane then goes on and remarries she will marry as Jane Smith.

Another possible thing to look out for is a birth certificate for any children of the second marriage. These may indicate the history of the mother's name.

For example, on the birth certificate of one of my grandmothers, it gives the mothers name as "Beatrice Florence X late Y formerly Z"

With X being her then current surname, Y being her former married name and Z her birth name.

In addition to the previous replies about step-fathers, perhaps the simplest answer would be that she had previously been married.

An English marriage cert will give the parties' marital status - whether they are single or widowed (or possibly divorced) at the time of the marriage.

the mysteries I worked at most doggedly usually was because they contradicted the oral history passed down. Like I was told "he was one of just 3 brothers" omitting 7 sisters also listed on the Census. or "Rudolf and his mother fled alone in middle of night from a cruel father" : er no, the entire large family emigrated from Switzerland to USA together and she soon was living with another man while her husband went back to Switzerland, and Rudolf's brother lived in the same area where my dad grew up, my dad could have met those cousins but for the lies about "Rudolf was an only child".

It’s really quite amazing what gets passed down and what gets ” forgotten”. My dad was a lifelong prude, turns out his mother was pregnant on her wedding day, we are not sure who the child’s father was ( eldest son does not look like his father or 4 other siblings). Ironically dad did genealogical research professionally but never looked into his own family tree. He didn’t even know where his ancestors were from

Thanks everyone for your helpful suggestions about my grandmother’s mysterious 3 surnames ( birth/ on her wedding certificate / married surname). Next time I go to the P.R.O I will check to see if great GM married again after being widowed.