Out-of-Wedlock Children

Before I got into genealogy, I assumed, quite mistakenly, that out of wedlock children were a modern day occurrence. I've learned, at every turn, that it happened much more frequently than I sure would have expected.

Most laws in the US and Great Britain,  appear to attach a stigma to the child by labeling them a bastard. More modern laws, take that stigma away if the parents eventually marry. But what of those children whose parents don't ever marry?  I've come up on two situations recently.

HENRIETTA HOBBS, b. 1873 in Berkshire, England appears to have had a son, ARTHUR EDWARD HOBBS, out of wedlock in 1897 in Oxfordshire. There doesn't seem to be a record of his father (although I haven't seen an official birth record yet.) When Arthur marries in 1918, he does not list a father on his marriage record. The interesting thing is that Henrietta marries in 1900 to JAMES PARSONS. She does not take her son to live with her in her marriage. He stays with his grandparents.  This seems to be a common way of dealing with this if the mother didn't "give the child up." Henrietta and James went on to have a family of their own.

In my family, my gr-great grandfather, ALEXANDER CLARK was born out of wedlock to GRACE CHRISTY in 1834 in Fife, Scotland. There is a record in 1834 in the Cupar Sheriff's Court Aliment Decrees where Grace is listed along with the father ALEXANDER CLARK. In this case, Grace obviously acknowledges the child and is trying to get some support. It appears as though Grace and Alexander never married and it is possible that Grace may have gone on to live as a "housekeeper" with another family - and may have had two or three other children out of wedlock within that family. So if this is true, why did she never get married.?The man in this second family was a widower so he appears to have been free to marry. It is unclear to me yet, what happened to the father and what happened to the son between the time of his birth and the time of his marriage in 1854. Pieces of the puzzle yet to be filled in.

Early on in England, it appears as though once a child is born out of wedlock, they were always considered to be a bastard, regardless of whether their parents were ever married. This changed in 1926 so that if the parents married, that legal designation went away.  Wikipedia says the term bastard may have come from the word bastum which means packsaddle. This was apparently because originally they thought these children were fathered by passing travelers.

In Wales, a bastard was a child not acknowledged by his father. If a child was acknowledged by his father, then he was not legally considered a bastard and could inherit regardless of whether he was born in or out of wedlock.

As a genealogist, I find all these occurrences quite interesting and add to the colorful fabric that makes up our family history.