A cousin has very kindly given me copies of some of the pages of a family album entitled the Family Register, starting with a couple who were born in 1849 and who married in 1872; I don’t know if they bought the album and filled it in as their children were born but I think probably they did.
They had twelve children between 1873 and 1891… good heavens! how did they manage? I had my second child when I was forty-two, she had her twelfth child at the same age! Sadly three of the children died as infants or very young children, but that is still a large family to feed, clothe and look after.
When you look at the register a little more closely, all beautifully filled in with a lovely copperplate hand, you begin to realise that several people must have written in information as the deaths of the family are recorded as well as their births and for some, their marriages.
When you look even more closely, you can plainly see that there have been a few little ‘alterations’ made! The date of the couple’s marriage wasn’t 1872, it was later, their first three children were not born in 1873, 1874 and 1875. Their first child was born in 1872, their second, another boy, was born in 1873 and the third, a little girl in 1874… so all the children were actually a year older than the Family Register says, and when did the couple marry? They actually married in 1873… but someone had adjusted the records so it seemed they were married before the first child was born.
This album is a private family album, but someone was very sensitive about something which these days, certainly in much of British society, would not be an issue, the fact that a child was born before the parents married.
Lois Elsden 