Research your history for long enough, and it’s highly likely you’ll eventually find an ancestor single mother. In 1861, the Registrar General reported that almost one in ten births in Scotland were to single mothers, so if say your greatgrandparents were all born around that time, it would be more likely than not that at least one of them was born illegitimate. Certainly in my own family, that’s true – my great- grandfather, Robert Wilson Smith, was born in Elizabeth Smith, an domestic servant. In years of civil registration, over 150,000 children were born in Scotland with no fathers’ name in the birth registers.
First steps
Family born to a 1873 to unmarried the first 20 So if you find yourself in this situation, how do you go about finding the father? Fortunately, there are several avenues to explore to help you break down this type of brick wall. The modern system of civil registration in Scotland was established by the Registration of Births, Deaths and Marriages (Scotland) Act 1854. This laid down the rules applicable to the
In 1861, almost one in ten births in Scotland were to single mothers so you may well find yourself in search of an
