Well, see it's like this, you can't believe everything you read! ☺☺☺ Last year an English fellow, a super genealogy sleuth on the Wigtown list, did some digging for me regarding my father's grandfather, my great-grandfather. All I knew was his wife's name, and that he was a miner with seven children, living in Kirkcudbrightshire. Between censuses and BDMs, this super sleuth uncovered that a year after the death of the wife (great-grandmother) of this great-grandfather, he took off for England, where he remarried five years later. Eventually the couple moved to Wales where he began a second family. The documents/censuses I have list this new family, plus nephews, boarders and servants at the Welsh address. So far so good, until a young woman, who turns out to be related to me as a descendant of my great-grandfather's Welsh-born family, found a query from me "somewhere" online about my father's family and responded with some interesting facts. Apparently the "nephews" were not nephews at all, but the second wife's children from a "former" husband. The "nephews" seemingly went through their whole lives unaware that this "aunt" was in fact their mother. The facts have only now surfaced when someone else on "that" Welsh side did some research and uncovered the real relationship. It has been suggested that this was a bigamous relationship between my great-grandfather and his second "wife," the reason being that in the 1800s most ordinary people could not afford to divorce, and so there was a lot of covering up if there were children from the first marriage. I wonder if my great-grandfather knew that the boys were hers and not her nephews. It would seem to me that he would have to have known, or else she was a fantastic actor/liar! Nowhere on the censuses I have does it indicate that the males are anything other than nephews, so right there, somebody told some big fibs decade in decade out. To add to this, with my limited knowledge, I believe that women cannot hide previous pregnancies, except maybe if the children were eased into this world at the hands of a midwife and not a practiced doctor. Certainly nowadays an ob/gy would know if there had been prior pregnancies/births. She could have got away with her "deceit," therefore. if the "nephews" had been delivered at home by a midwife. Unless some of the "half" relatives can uncover some narrative information about this cover-up, I wonder if I'll ever find out the reason for it...except, as pointed out, most ordinary people could not afford a divorce, plus all the made-up nasty ramifications of proving why it was necessary to divorce one's spouse. Prior to our more enlightened times one or the other had to be shown to be unfaithful, etc., whereas nowadays irreconcilable differences are enough for both parties to be out the door! ☺☺☺ My family had always talked about a relative being a mine manager, but the modest wee houses he was born and lived in in the Kirkcudbrightshire and Wigtownshire areas, led me to believe that he was not in the top drawer league. Later, I learned from more documents that he was captain of mines in Wales, and so he must have been earning a wee bitty mair siller! This was reinforced when this "half-relative" sent me a photo of a three-storey house he either lived in or owned in Wales It has a basement in which perhaps the "skivvies" lived. This is what is fascinating about genealogy when one can get beyond the barebones of basic stats. I'm looking forward to anymore "gossip" on this great-grandfather and his second "wife." I wonder how they got away with being in a bigamous relationship for so many years, if that was the case. Maybe that's why they moved from England to Wales where no one would know them. The plot thickens! Maisie --------------------------------------------------------------------------------