The only thing worse than trying to untangle generations of children with the same name are identifying children who were born out of wedlock. Having a "base-born" or "bastard" child was frowned upon by both society and the Church, and so families often went to great lengths to cover up such occurrences.
One of my earliest paternal ancestors was Joseph Seddon, born sometime around 1814. His baptism record from St. Mary the Virgin Church in Eccles, Lancashire reads: "April 10 1814, Joseph, bastard son of Sarah Seddon of Monton". No father is indicated, and with mandatory birth registration still 23 years away I knew it wouldn't be easy to get more facts.
A few quick searches told me that Sarah's parents were Joseph Seddon and Sarah Lansdale of Eccles. So Sarah had an illegitimate child, named him for either her father or an elder brother, and assigned him her surname. There's little to go on here.
Five years later, she married James Partington, a cotton weaver, at St. Mary the Virgin Church in Prestwich: "18 July 1819, James Partington and Sarah Seddon were Married in this Church, by Banns, by me J. J. Kirkbank". James Partington signed the document but Sarah only marked an X with her name being written in by the priest, clearly indicating that she was illiterate. By the 1841 England Census, Sarah Partington is living on her own in Monton with a 15-year-old son. Records determined that by this time, her firstborn son Joseph Seddon had two half-brothers with the name Partington.
Could James Partington have been Joseph Seddon's father? On the marriage record, Sarah Seddon is mentioned to be from Outwood, Surrey even though her baptism and census information clearly show her to be from Monton, Eccles. This discrepancy might have been an attempt to conceal that they'd already had a child together. Or this could have been a research error on my part and the aforementioned marriage is a different couple with the same names, but I could find no other matching records at the time.
An obvious counter-indication is the length of time between the births of Joseph and his half-brothers. Seven years is very long between births, particularly in the 1800s. One would think that Joseph Seddon's father would've married Sarah quickly at the behest of the families rather than disappear. Then again, we have these possible scenarios:
1. The father abandoned both Sarah and the child for some reason.
2. Sarah herself kept the baby's father completely off the record to protect him from her family's wrath.
3. Sarah and the child's father were closely related and therefore couldn't legally register the child together.
In any case, I was still no further ahead so next I tried a different tack. Sometimes, parents of illegitimate children went to court after they married to legitimize their offspring so the child could inherit. However, there seems to be no such record that I could find for Joseph Seddon. That made it more unlikely that the father could be James Partington.
Still, some information about the father had to exist. According to the law at the time, if a marriage was not forthcoming, the other parent could be forced to enter into a bond to pay for the subsequent maintenance of the child. This is known as a Bastardy Bond or Indemnity Bond. The municipality of Salford (in which the community of Eccles is included) does have bastardy documents, but they aren't available online and I highly doubt they would allow overseas borrowing of microfilms. Short of finding a researcher in the area who would look it up for me, it was a major roadblock.
I might never find out who my ancestor's real father was. But I remain thankful that his name has carried down the generations to someone who cares enough about the family history to go looking.
