I sure do. My great-grandmother became pregnant by my great-grandfather when she was 17 years old. She was very excited and she made plans to marry. He made no such plans. He thought he could do better. He was from a wealthy family and she was from one of more modest means. She stayed with her parents. She had the baby and began to raise her. He apparently didn't find anyone who wanted to marry a man who had an out-of-wedlock baby, and eventually (7 years later), he finally did marry her. They raised a total of 8 children. The oldest, the out-of-wedlock child, was considered less than a genuine descendant by the subsequent children. She was treated as an outcast by them. They called themselves the "real" children. In tracing our family history, I've had trouble locating her after she married and left town. And there was only one picture of this aunt in my mother's photograph album. She wasn't a big part of the lives of any of her siblings as far as I can tell. There was always an edge to my mother's voice when she spoke of her, and she only spoke of her when identifying the picture. Otherwise, I'd never heard of her. The legacy of illegitimacy continued to stigmatize members of the family as long as they remained in town. My mother, who was the daughter of the first legitimate child in that family, grew up with a family "secret" that was well known to the entire community. She was clearly embarrassed by it, and my father says she was teased about the "bastard" in the family. When she and her sister moved away from the community, they felt secure that the secret would die with them. It didn't. I got interested in genealogy and pursued it despite my mother's adamant objections. Of course, I discovered this secret, at least parts of it, and after my mother died, my father revealed the rest to us. I think this event and the secrecy surrounding it has colored the way the women in our family handle themselves for generations past the out-of-wedlock birth, and I bet many of them would agree with me, even those who don't know the secret. It has made for a family of very strong women. Dorothy Brumleve Dianne Ingram wrote: > > What would life had been like for a girl 19 yrs. old > who was pregnant but not married in the year 1885? > > Would she be kept at home - hidden? > Would she be shipped off with an excuse for her > missing time? > > How would she be treated when she returned? > > Does anyone have stories pertaining to this situation? > > Dianne Ingram in Oregon > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around > http://mail.yahoo.com > > ==== ILEFFING Mailing List ==== > If you want to subscribe to this list or unsubscribe from it, send e-mail to ILEFFING-L-request@rootsweb.com or (for the > digest list) ILEFFING-D-request@rootsweb.com and put the word subscribe or > unsubscribe in the message body.