Graham Norton’s Mystery Around Illegitimate Children | Who Do You Think You Are
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 ก.ย. 2024
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Graham Norton - or Graham William Walker, as he was born - left Ireland when he was young and hasn't looked back - until now. He always felt out of place, growing up in a small Protestant family in the predominantly Catholic south of Ireland. But he now admits that he feels drawn to the country, and wonders if his discoveries might change his view of Ireland. There is only one way to find out.
Graham begins his journey on the trail of his great grandmother, Mary. On her daughter's birth certificate, she is listed as Mary Reynolds, formerly Dooey. But a handwritten document in his mother's possession tells Graham that there was some confusion over her name, and that she was also known as Mary Logan. There is a mystery here. Was there something to hide?
Graham tracks down Mary's marriage certificate of 1895, where she is listed as Mary Logan. No father's name is provided, suggesting that Mary was illegitimate. From baptism records of Mary's children, Graham realises that she must have been eight months' pregnant at the time of her wedding - and recognises the shame that this held in her society. Graham also locates Mary's own baptism record, where she is Mary Jane Logan. So where does Dooey come from? The answer is nestled in the baptism records of one of Mary's siblings, where the father was listed as Fred Dooey, but the name has been scratched out. It is very likely that Fred Dooey was Mary's father, but was not married to her mother when the children were born. Thus Graham has solved the mystery of the Dooey name, and recognises how unusual it was for Mary's mother to have produced four children out of wedlock - and to remain living in the same community throughout. Her 'misdemeanours' must therefore have been accepted, and Graham is pleased to see it.
Graham then turns his attention to his southern Irish Protestant roots, hoping to discover how far back they go. His paternal grandfather, George Walker, was sexton of the Protestant church in Carnew. Land valuation records reveal that George's father was William (and his grandfather Joseph) and was a tenant of the Fitzwilliam Estate - in other words, he was linked to English Protestant planters. Joseph was a pillar of the Protestant community - vestry minutes at Carnew show that he was a churchwarden, which meant that he had the right to levy taxes from Protestants and Catholics alike for the upkeep of the Protestant Church of Ireland.
Still hot on the trail, Graham uses parish records and the Fitzwilliam estate papers to push the family back another three generations, including Thomas, who lived in Carnew through the Irish Rebellion of 1798, when the town was a royalist stronghold, and Carnew Castle the scene of a famous massacre of Catholics. The records show that a certain John Walker, almost certainly a relation, was shot and piked whilst fighting for the royalist cause.
But Graham has still more to discover. With the help of the Fitzwilliam Estate Papers, Hearth Tax records and baptism registers, he is able to trace his first ancestor who went from Yorkshire to Ireland - in about 1713.
And so, although surprised to be a Yorkshireman, Graham declares that he is comforted that his family have resided in Ireland for so many generations and pleased to be rooted so deeply in history.
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There's another possibility. In the latter part of the 19th century, under Victorian strictures, it IS possible that Fred Dewey was already married to someone and could not divorce her. They could have been estranged and Fred Dewey could have established a common law type relationship with Margaret Logan. They would not have been married by any legal means, but they may have remained in a stable relationship, with Margaret bearing more than one child to him. He would likely have provided for her and their children and, so far as the community might think or know, they could have been a couple like any other at the time. The children of this relationship MIGHT have gone by the name Dewey, but a birth register could not have recorded that name legally.
One MercilessMing Thought the same thing, look him up see if Fred is married.
But wasn't divorce legal if you were protestant? Or was it still frowned upon?
Or they even could have been married for the law but if Fred Dooey was catholic they might not have mentioned him in the church records because it was a protestant church.
@@rowens.yarnings--There are several mixed marriages in my family going back several centuries and neither a Protestant nor a Catholic church would have failed to record the marriage in the records if it was done in a church, Catholic or Protestant. My grandparents, both born in 1881, were married in a Catholic Church ceremony, although she was Lutheran and he, Roman Catholic (anathema, yes, I know). Those church records exist in the archives at the diocese even though the church is now closed.
Fred wife could have been in a mad house
I'm thinking that Fred Dooey had to have been married to someone else, so he couldn't marry margaret. and that perhaps margaret was a servant in his household.
I thought the same.
Yes, I'm surprised they didn't investigate him more.
That makes a lot of sense.
Yes I thought the same Fred must have been married.
Yes, I would have been looking in that register for other children that Fred did claim.
There are so many possible explanations for having 4 children over the course of 8 years in the 1870's without listing the birth father in the baptismal records. Perhaps Fred Doey's first wife was mentally ill, and "institutionalized"; if she's still alive at this time, she couldn't be divorced, but everyone in the community accepted the fact that he took Margaret Logan as his common-law wife, lived with her, and their children were his children in all but name. The fact that the town still has so many businesses with the family name "Logan" leads one to believe they were a prominent family, and thus, normal "rules" did not have to apply to Logans in this town. Just one possibility. Another could be that Fred Doey (that is how the surname is spelled and scratched out from the first baptismal entry in the book) was Catholic, so he could not be named as the father of children being baptized in the Protestant Church? Another possibility. I would ask to see birth/death registers of the nearest Catholic church to check for other Doey's, including Fred. ~Diana K.
It was Dooey. Shown in another video
@@eily_bboth, because he’d say it and some wrote it as Doey some as Dooey, going by phonetics
One might remember Margaret Logan was Church of Ireland, protestant. Possibly Dopey was catholic & 'never the twain shall meet.' The religious bigotry could have kept the 2 from marrying. Another possibilitiy was she was his mistress. She concieved & kept the children in a dwelling he provided.
I hope ‘Dopey’ was a typo 😂
I adore Graham Norton. I’d love to hang out with him ... he makes me laugh, especially his laugh!
So agree!😊
Perhaps Fred Dooey was married to someone who, though unable to be a spouse in any sense of the word, he could not divorce. I am thinking Jane Eyre.
I'm imagining that she was the loved mistress of a wealthier married man.
my so many times grandfather was illegitimate. He had two siblings both also illegitimate. His mother ended up in the workhouse. He disappears on a lot of the records until he marries and has children.
I'm a huge fan of graham Norton. Love his story .... BTW,, my mothe was Catholic from a Catholic area of Ireland. Early 1900s before emigratin to USA. Her sister got pregnant out of wedlock. The family accepted the need to support and house her, never a thought of sending her away. BUT there was an issuue with her dowry. She and the father planned to marry but he was a penniless laborer and that did not fit the dowry concept--dowries were given to make the person (male or female) equal in economics and marriage to the spouse. My father's older sister, for instance, "bought into" a marriage to a pretty wealthy business owner. Her dowry made her his economic equal in the business as well his equal in the marriage. At any rate my mother got the olldest sister to drop her opposition to giving the dowry. The parents wanted to do it but the oldest child, the sister an equal say in the matter. My mother and her suister got their dowries without having to be nmarried. They left of their own free will for NYC. The sister married her lover there. But the politically powerful cousin, who sponsored my "respectable" mother, refused to sponsor the unwed pregnant sister. The sister and her now husband left for Australia where they bought a farm with he dowry, and they prospered. Ironically the sister was far more "churchy" than my mother. Among her children were two nuns and a priest. Not in my family, lol.
The fact that she had four children and the name of the father was rubbed out after the first one makes me wonder whether he was possibly a catholic priest that had a family in secret. He would not have been able to get married officially, but there are many priests out there that have families.
yeah but mostly this records are made b the curch and wirten by the priest or people working for it. So the priest himself or soeone working for him o is close to him would not make the mistsake wirting his name down at first.
@@redzora80 The original poster's theory was that the children's father was a Catholic priest, and since the children were baptised in a Protestant church, it could have happened the way she described it. I had a similar wondering, whether some Catholic priest from Donegal could have fathered the children ;)
or just catholic period…
This is so cool!!! I have ancestors like this. My great-grandfather, one of them anyways, was not only born out of wedlock, but he was one of at least SEVEN children born to his unwed mother! And she never married! She died never having married. It was incredibly strange, and this is still now only the second example I've seen of this situation happening. Granted, my great-grandfather and his siblings were Italian, but even the era coincides! Those seven children were born between 1857 and 1879. Here, Graham's got births in the same range.
So cool!!!
Wow! How interesting
I have found several of my Irish ancestors pregnant when they married. My grandmother was 8 mths pregnant with my uncle when she and my grandfather married in Westport, Co Mayo.
my thought is that having 4 children out of wedlook could mean either the father wasn't excepted in the church as her husband.
He wasn'T able to marry her in anyway but ther connection was accepted in the comunity
Or maybe she was a women of doubtfull work to say it nicely...
I would have looked for that fred guy in some records, it would have bring a clue to this. but stillw atching maybe it will come.
Just a suggestion- kindly put which part follows which. It's confusing.
Fread Dooey might not have been Catholic, there were some tricky about the names of non-Catholics being banned from the church registry in certain places. So they could have been married outside the faith, but Margret still had them baptized Catholic.
I think it is very likely that Fred Dooey was a Protestant. Ahogill is a Protestant town by they’re in a Catholic Church.
I saw this same situation in my family records in the 1800s. The mother was Catholic, the father Lutheran. The children were baptized Lutheran and recorded with both parents as legitimate in Lutheran records (the parents were married by the local Lutheran priest as a mixed couple) but the Catholic priest recorded them as well (with a note that said they were baptized Lutheran) as illegitimate with only the mother listed. It stands to reason that if both sides of the equation were hostile and not open to mixed marriages, the two might have been in an exclusive relationship but "living in sin" because neither of the priests would marry them.
@@anniikka oh, Wow!!
There was at least one Dooey family in nearby Ballymena. It's an odd name so I'm surprised they couldn't find anything in the parish books. I suppose it was just a little too far back.
I'm thinking that the women of those families loved their children and Grandchildren and weren't as harsh as we think they were.
Fantastic summary at the end
That's funny because I remember my mum talking about my Grandads sister going "away to visit an Aunt" in Moose Jaw.
Why would her family have been ok with it and her community? Four children born out of wedlock in 8 years would have been scandalous.
the father was probably in the church and very high up, so she was essentially protected
Graham, you’re being rather hard on Margret. What about the father’s role? Unknown circumstances all round.
I'm very lucky as a child of an unmarried mother to be born when I was rather than even just like in the 60s 70s and even in my life my step grandads auntie did look down on me and my brother alot she was religious and didn't understand that children can br raised by grandparents and that no all people marry etc
Is it just me or does Mary Logan (Dooey) look remarkably like Phil Donahue?
So who was Fred Dooey ?
I wonder if Margaret thought she was married to Fred. Maybe Fred was a bigamist?
U where saying about “Going to an aunts” “and going to England” I thought as well she could of gone to the maddening laundry’s or somewhere like that
- Graham, wouldn't you think that your great great grandmother was viewed as a married woman having kids (5?) with the same guy who would come and go ? In the old days many couples lived together as married and nobody ever bothered to verify if it was legit.
Let's hope they didn't have to deal with the Order of Mary Magdelene.
Logan seems to be a rich family, would Fred being poor back then mean they couldn't get married?
I honestly think it's not really likely but I feel like still asking since I don't really know much about Irish history.
Did they search the local records for Dooey? That would have been the logical thing to do. Find out who he was - and if he was married... 😎
They do gloss over the fact that not all pregnancies are consensual. Perhaps it wasn't her choices at play here.
True but to have four of them doesn't suggest that. Especially since great grandmother at some point used Dooey as was listed as an older sibling suggests this was an ongoing relationship with one person.
Seriously, four times? As the above commenter said, unlikely it wasn’t consensual.
So he does at least have some Gaelic ancestry..Graham, Reynolds (Some Reyolds are part Norse), and Logan.
Maybe Fred Dewey could have been the first child's father, and not the others. And left due to infidelity.
dooey
Fred could have been Catholic. In N I especially at that time would have been taboo!
Margaret or Margret?
I was thinking maybe they were married, but maybe Fred was a turd or did something shameful and so the family didnt want to be associated with him. I really wish they investigated him more!
❤️❤️
She was a brass 😂😂
His great great grandmother was a naughty woman lol. 4 children. Queen Victoria couldn't understand why she kept getting pregnant and she finally worked it out after number 9 was born.
DNA testing!!
Dooey came from money