In a message dated 29/06/2004 13:43:58 GMT Daylight Time, robert@welbourn.com writes: Yes, there were plenty. Same human urges, but no contraception. It is very instructive just to read records of baptisms in parish registers! Rob. At 07:16 AM 6/29/2004, JessicaMeek@aol.com wrote: >Were illegitimate children common back in the 1800's? I seem to have a lot >in my family? Could this just be my family or was there a lot >of illegitimacy? . . Agreed. It was in ALL families, and at ALL periods. Every time a married woman had a child, the father of that child was automatically assumed to have been that woman's husband, however unlikely that was. I have seen baptism entries from the early nineteenth century (1st decade thereof) where the clerk has described a child, in an almost apologetic side comment, as "child of (the mother's name), but not, it is to be feared, of her husband, who has been away fighting in France for the last five years"! . . I have known people assume a child was illegitimate just because the father's name is not stated in an index. Reference to the original register might reveal whether the mother was a spinster (ie the child really was illegitimate) or a recent widow, in which case it was probably posthumous. . . It is interesting to note the many euphemisms used by early clerks who either could not bring themselves to write "illegitimate" or couldn't spell it. "Bastard" and "base born" ("b b")are the commonest, but there are many others. "Natural child" is polite enough, and obviously factual, but "a by-blow" is rather more obscure and "child of the people" sounds as though it could hide some unwritten scandal! . . I know the so-called "politically correct" do not like to use the word, but it is probably true that there are more bastards born today, by far, than ever in the last 1,000 years, so we would have no real grounds, as a society, for taking up "holier than thou" positions with respect to it among our ancestors. . . Geoff Nicholson . 57 Manor Park, Concord, WASHINGTON, Tyne & Wear NE37 2BU Ask for details of NBL/DUR family history research in depth by THE local expert, working for YOU.