Illegitimate Births in Gloucester, MA, 1855-1894
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ILLEGITIMATE BIRTHS IN GLOUCESTER, MA, 1855 – 1894 The term “illegitimacy” is derived from the Latin illegitimus, meaning “not in accordance with the law.” A child is considered illegitimate when it is conceived and born outside of the regulatory sanctions of marriage. In order to facilitate genealogical research the Gloucester, Massachusetts, City Archive department is in the process of building a series of data bases of the births, marriages, and deaths that took place in Gloucester in the last half of the 19th century. As we entered birth information into this data base we wondered what became of those children identified as ‘illegitimate.’ The following is a result of those ruminations. Please note that the figures provided are not conclusive, as during the period 1860 to 1875 the legal status of the child was only sporadically noted in the official records – an interesting fact in and of itself. Also, at the time of this survey, deaths were only available in an easily searchable format for the years between 1851 and 1873. Obtaining the figures from 1874 to 1894 would have consumed more time than was available to this researcher. Nonetheless, certain conclusions can still be drawn from the easily obtainable records. Illegitimate births accounted for less than 1% of the overall births in Gloucester during the thirty-nine years spanned by the survey, and were equally divided between the sexes (108 boys and 107 girls). This figure seems extraordinarily low compared, for instance, to the year 2000 when approximately 26% of all births in Massachusetts were recorded as illegitimate. However, one must take into account various social factors. Firstly, an exhaustive comparison of marriage dates with birth dates during the survey years would undoubtedly show that there were many illegitimate conceptions that became legitimate births by the hasty marriage of the parents; an event much less likely to occur today. Secondly, with the demise of the “stigma of illegitimacy,” there is a growing trend in the 21st century for unmarried career women in their twenties and thirties to deliberately have children out of wedlock. All of the figures collected and cases cited are a matter of public record, but ancestral illegitimacy can still be a sensitive issue for some. I have therefore only used first names when identifying individuals in this overview. There were several long standing and unsupported assumptions about these children and their parents that we believed the survey would confirm. It turned out that this was often not the case. Of the 215 illegitimate children born in Gloucester between 1855 and 1894 almost one quarter died before they were two years old, compared to the city’s overall infant mortality rate of 16%, with the boys dying twice as frequently as the girls. The most frequent single cause of death was stillbirth, which at 22% of the deaths was slightly more than that of the general population. The second highest cause of death was from Cholera Infantum, a fatal form of gastroenteritis occurring in the summer months and attributed to “hot weather and poor milk.” Not surprisingly, death from Cholera Infantum within the illegitimate population was twice as high as it was among the overall deaths. On the other hand dysentery, a disease often associated with poverty, was not listed as a cause of death among the illegitimate children at all, but was the second highest mortality figure from disease in the general population. Here are three cases of stillbirth: Martha was seventeen, a domestic servant in an elderly widow’s house, when her baby was stillborn. Belle, aged twenty-seven, had been thrown out of her parents house and was living at the Poor House when her baby was stillborn. John was due to appear in 1 ILLEGITIMATE BIRTHS IN GLOUCESTER, MA, 1855 – 1894 court accused of impregnating a woman out of wedlock, but his son was stillborn, and the case dismissed. And five cases of death from Cholera Infantum: William’s mother died when he was nine days old from Puerperal Fever and he succumbed to Cholera Infantum eleven months later. John died of Cholera Infantum when he was nine months old and his father died of Phthisis the same day. Georgianna died at sixteen months of age, shortly after her mother got married. Estelle, whose mother was just sixteen, died at the age of five months. Edgar, who had just been adopted, was three months old when he succumbed. Of the 165 surviving illegitimate children, 65 were untraceable (33 of the boys and 32 of the girls), usually accompanied by the disappearance of the mother. We had presumed that the majority of these missing women were not Cape Ann natives but ‘incomers’ working and living in town as domestic servants, and that therefore, with no close family ties within the community, they had simply taken their children and returned home. This proved not to be entirely true. While 62% of those working were indeed employed as domestic servants, the number of missing mothers born in Gloucester (22) was almost equal to the number from Nova Scotia and vicinity (23). The locally born women presumably had a support system of parents, siblings, aunts and uncles here to assist them, so why they disappear from the official records (marriage, death and census) is not apparent, and remains an unanswered question. The following are two such examples: Esther, the fifth in a family of six children all born in Gloucester, was only sixteen when she got pregnant. Her father had died almost a year earlier and an older sister was married shortly after Esther’s confinement. Yet, despite a mother, three sisters and a brother still at home, Esther and her baby disappear from all records. Little Frank died when he was three months old. His mother, Emma, was twenty-three and Gloucester born. Her mother, also Gloucester born, had died six years before, but her father, four sisters and two brothers were still in town. Yet, after working for a year as a domestic servant, Emma disappears from all records. In certain instances the child disappeared from the records but the mother remained in the community, leading to the supposition that the child had been adopted. But there were only 5 traceable adoptions. Adoption in Massachusetts, where the first such statute had been enacted in 1851, officially required judicial approval, consent of the child’s parent or guardian, and a finding that the prospective adoptive family was of sufficient ability to raise the child. In reality, while consent was usually sought, the other parameters were seldom adhered to and the records were often incomplete or absent. Sometimes the adoption was done through the Overseers of the Poor, as in this case: Alice was six years old and had been living at the Poor House since the death of her mother two years previously. She was “boarded out” to, and then adopted by, a twenty- six year old single woman called Georgianna. The Overseers of the Poor were “confident that she [Georgianna] would, they judged, [do the] best for the good of the child” and therefore “disposed of her.” At the age of fourteen Alice was still living with Georgianna’s widowed mother and siblings, but Georgianna was no longer with them and Alice herself disappears from the records soon after. Sometimes the adoption appeared in the birth record: Alena’s parents were married eleven days after her birth. It is not apparent why they did so as it did not legitimize Alena’s birth and she was almost immediately adopted by a childless couple whose names are appended to her birth record. Not surprisingly Alena’s biological parents soon parted and went their separate ways. Alena grew up with her adoptive parents, married a local fisherman and had children of her own. 2 ILLEGITIMATE BIRTHS IN GLOUCESTER, MA, 1855 – 1894 Sometimes the record of an adoption appears almost by accident: A couple, Edgar and Sarah, who never had any children of their own seem to have adopted or fostered several illegitimate children. At one time little Freddie, whose mother had just died, was “boarding” with them, before returning to his grandparents’ home. They later ‘adopted’, although no official papers have been found, another little boy who died as their son at the age of three months, and a little girl called Lillian who got pregnant herself at the age of thirteen. Similarly, with a large and transient population of Canadian fishermen in town we had assumed that the largest number of the fathers would be mariners from the Atlantic Maritimes. While the majority (43%) were indeed fishermen, the commonest place of birth, regardless of profession, was in fact Cape Ann (36%), with the Canadian born men coming in a very close second at 34%. Those fathers not fishermen were mostly employed in manual labor (36%), but a surprising number (13%) were involved in such service industries as shops and offices, while 5% fell into the professional category. Notable amongst these latter were two who later became physicians, and a clergyman. William was an unmarried twenty-three year old blacksmith when his daughter was stillborn. He quickly left Gloucester to attend college, obtained a medical degree and opened a practice in a nearby town. Apart from a few years as a medical officer during World War I he remained there for the rest of his life and never married. Thomas was from Nova Scotia and working on the fish wharves in Gloucester before he also took off for college and earned a degree in medicine. However, he returned to marry a Gloucester girl (not the mother of his illegitimate daughter) before moving to Boston where he set up his practice.