efore the introduction of civil registration in 1837 in England and Wales, and 1855 in Scotland, the most likely indication of an illegitimate birth will be found at the child's baptism where, along with the absence of the father's name, the register entry might be annotated “bastard”, “base”, “illegitimate”, “natural”, or with the Latin or . Finding that an ancestor was illegitimate often leads to an assumption that an insurmountable brick wall has been encountered, but before abandoning a particular line there are searches that can be made and sometimes clues to be considered. For instance, if the child has a surname as its middle name or an unusual first name, it could be that of its father. Search censuses and parish registers to see whether the name occurs in the
