Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Would It Have Been Three Generations of Illegitimate Births?

It occurred to me that we almost could have had three consecutive generations of illegitimate births in my family.

We start with my grandfather.  I have written previously about how my great-grandmother Laura, way back in 1903, had my grandfather without the benefit of marriage.  His original birth certificate had the socially disapproving "OW" ("out of wedlock") written on the line where the father's name would normally have been.  The form actually included instructions to write OW if the child was born out of wedlock.  I guess you weren't allowed to put the father's name under those circumstances.

Sure, my great-grandmother went back 37 years later and amended the birth certificate to include her (then deceased) first husband's name as the father, but I proved through Y-DNA testing that Cornelius Elmer Sellers was not my grandfather's biological father.  I'm very happy that Elmer was willing to marry Laura and accepted her 7-month-old son as his own.  Neither my grandfather nor any of his siblings had any idea, as far as I can tell.  But Grandpa was still born illegitimate.

Grandpa went on to marry in 1923, and he and his first wife, Elizabeth, had three children.  The first one, a little boy, died at just 20 months old, but my two aunts lived long lives, and I knew both of them.

In 1930, just after the start of the Great Depression, the four family members were enumerated in the census as living in four different places.  Grandpa was back at home, living with his mother.  The older of my aunts was living in that county in the county children's home.  The younger aunt was living with a relatively well off couple in a different county.  Elizabeth was living in that second county, working as a maid for a family.  My guess is that she moved to that county so one of the parents would be near their younger daughter.

According to the 1930 census, Grandpa was working as a textile weaver at the silk mill in town.  Coincidentally, my grandmother Anna was also working as a textile weaver at the silk mill in town.  My hypothesis is that the silk mill is where they met each other.

However they met, they got along well enough that my father was born in 1935.  And they stayed together for about 17 years or so, until my grandfather decided to run off with a young woman he had met working at the nearby U.S. Army post.

Maybe my grandfather had a reputation.  But that young woman told him that she wasn't going to do anything with him until he proved to her that he was a single man (at least, that's what she told me).  So in 1953, he got divorced — from Elizabeth, not from Anna.  Which meant that he had never been married to my grandmother.  Which then meant that my father was illegitimate.

Hey, now we have two generations!

Many, many years later, my father was married to his third wife.  One day she suddenly decided she wanted to convert to Catholicism.  We learned that part of the process for that was that she had to have her and my father's previous marriages annulled.

When my father's first wife, Mary Lou, heard about that, she was extremely upset.  After all, they had had a daughter together.  And Mary Lou believed that if the marriage was annulled, the daughter (my half-sister) would then be officially considered illegitimate.

My stepmother did not follow through on her conversion, so none of the marriages was annulled, and we didn't have to deal with Mary Lou stressing over my sister being declared illegitimate.

Recently, I learned that the marriage of my cousin's parents was officially annulled.  My cousin thought that had made her illegitimate, and she was still upset about that, even though it had occurred many years previously.

I researched the question, and discovered that in the Catholic church, if a marriage is annulled but was a valid marriage to begin with, the children are still considered to be legitimate.

So not only is my cousin considered legitimate, which definitely made her feel better, even if my stepmother had gone through with her conversion, my sister also would have still been considered legitimate after her parents' marriage had been annulled.

So no, we would not have had three consecutive generations of illegitimate births.

But it still makes a good story.

When I discovered that my grandfather's divorce in 1953 was from Elizabeth and not from Anna, I called my father and told him, "Guess what?  You're a bastard!"  He thought it was hilarious.  And my sister was highly amused at the thought that she would be considered illegitimate if her parents' marriage were annulled.  We have a good sense of humor in this family.

Image by Steve Buissinne, stevepb, through Pixabay.  Used under the Pixabay content license.

8 comments:

  1. What a story! I've never heard of OW, this is a first for me.

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    1. I've never seen OW on any other birth records. I wonder if it was just a Jersey thing, or maybe a Burlington County thing. A new item to research!

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  2. I think I remember being told there was a silk mill in Burlington years ago and the Army Base may have been First Dix.

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    1. Yes, indeed, there was a silk mill, and the Army base was indeed Fort Dix.

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  3. Well that was very interesting. I'm not very fond of my grandfather Bertram.

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    1. I have heard that several people were not very fond of him. By the time I was born, he apparently was more mellow.

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  4. Great story. I had never heard of OW either, but I knew children of annulled marriages are legitimate.

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    1. Well, you were one up on me, then. But now I know also!

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