G2G: What do I do when the parent for a person is incorrect?

Question

My great great grandfather Frank Matthews (Matthews-13288) has parents listed as Jacob Matthews and Jane Techenor. Frank is listed as their son in some censuses. However, on his marriage record his father is listed as a William Matthews and his mother is listed as Catherine Matthews. He does have a sister Catherine. That sister married a William Fitch (there's a marriage record of it) in 1872. Frank was born in 1871. In one of the censuses where Frank still lives with his parents, he is listed as son but there are two Fitch children listed as grandkids of Jacob Matthews. They are only two and four years younger than Frank. I believe Frank was born out of wedlock by Catherine Matthews and William Fitch and was taken in by Catherine's parents to be raised as their son. Catherine ended up marrying the father (William Fitch) and had two more kids. I haven't figured out why the grandparents were looking after them in the census.

So, my question is: how do I show this in the tree? There is so much conflicting source material but I strongly suspect this is the relationship.

Answer 1

When census information is collected they recorded everyone in the house, even if they were just visiting. So it could be that the Fitch grandchildren were just there for a visit?

Records can have errors but the marriage registration information was collected personally from Frank, so I would consider it the most reliable at this point. Unless a birth registration can be found, at which point you update your info based on that.

If Jacob and Jane are non biological parents then in the information boxes above the bio tick that off. You could explain your suspicions, that Frank was possibly the illegitimate child of Catherine Matthews and William Fitch but is thought to have been raised by his grandparents. It would be best to lay out how/why you know this in a Research Notes section.  Finding a birth registration or death registration that gives his mother as Catherine Matthew would help support this.

Comments

Thank you so much! Your info was incredibly helpful! Much appreciated. :D