Secret Sex

My most recent blog post which revealed my family's 'Big Fat Secret' has drawn a number of responses including a warning about 'cans of worms' and the fervent hope that the family's dignity will not be further compromised, I assume compromised by me posting more about the 'improper' and secret sexual activity of my ancestors.   This left me quite puzzled as to why anybody would be distressed about sex which may have lasted only 15 seconds, between two adults not married to each other 157 years ago, and how my writing about the results of this ancient sex could compromise somebody’s dignity today.

I also made me wonder just how much historic secret sex there has been in my family that may cause people to be embarrassed if I were to talk about it.  Genealogy by its very nature is about sex, we keep a track of who had sex with whom, when and where and we chart the products of this sex through the various stages of their lives until they also have sex and the cycle begins again. Where the records don't tell us who one of the parties to the sex was we leave blanks in our records.  Blanks we overlook and ignore, and put something of a metaphorical road block there.  "Do Not Pass - Unknown Parent"    Of course we don't talk about it in terms of actual sex and especially not when the sex is illicit or between couples married to other people or just not married at all.  It's sort of like colouring outside the lines, we see it and it looks a bit messy and for the most part we just try to pretend it didn't happen.

Casting my mind back over the 20 years of my family research activities I realise there is a lot of evidence of secret sex which stretches back as far as a genealogists eye can see.  Sex I am perhaps not supposed to talk about even if everybody who did it has been dead for decades. Keeping secrets is not something I'm good at, especially secrets which aren't really secret and we don't even need to be embarrassed about or ashamed of.   So I'm dragging these secrets out of the family cupboard, like so many musty old quilts and I'm laying them in the sunlight. 

My grandmother Olive married in 1908, and by 1912 she was shacked up with a different man in a different city and having babies with him.  She had three illegitimate children before hubby number one died and she was free to marry again.  Such a surprise to discover long after her death that she had actually been Mrs Carne before she was Mrs Kinzett and in between she had lots of sex with somebody not her first husband who became her second husband and nobody ever talked about it.

My great uncle Sam, Olive's younger brother, was a very handsome young man, who married in 1913 and then in 1918 while in England fighting the Imperial Scourge impregnated a young British Nurse who later gave birth to an illegitimate son named Jimmy, and all the while his dutiful wife kept the home fires burning back in little old New Zealand. There is no doubt this caused some considerable distress in the family, especially when the young nurse later formed life-long friendships with Sam's siblings and visited them in New Zealand.

Sam's father Frank, you will remember from my 'Big Fat Secret', was divorced by his wife in 1911.  She had left him some years earlier on her Doctors advice.  Frank had contracted Syphilis in about 1901, a disease which in a world without penicillin would take 30 years to kill him. He was the son of Phillis Harris otherwise Smith, or Phillis Smith otherwise Harris depending on which records you consider to be official, and yes there is a story that involves sex which explains why she had so many names, we’ll get to that soon.  Frank's father was not his mother's husband, he was a Finnish Miller named Gustaf, a man employed by Frank's Uncle.

Gustaf was the illegitimate son of Madgalena Menlos the daughter of a Magistrate from the town of Tornio in Lapland.  There are no official records of who Gustaf’s father was and some speculation that he may have been a sailor.  You being to see that because of sex my family tree has a number of "Do Not Pass" signs and we've really only just begun.

Phillis Smith otherwise Harris was one of five 'natural born children' of Hannah Smith supposedly by her employer Robert Harris, a farmer from the hamlet of Taston in Oxfordshire.  On many occasions Hannah was called before the Church Council for 'Immoral behaviour and the begetting of illegitimate children'.  Hannah accepted the punishments dished out by the prurient church men and never revealed the name of her children’s father or fathers as the case may be.  The children were all raised in Robert Harris' home, with the surname Smith which suddenly became Harris after Robert died. Hannah never married and had a sixth child after Robert’s death who used the surname Smith, but was not an 'otherwise Harris'. Interestingly the five siblings never really overcame the naming issue as nobody quite knew what name they should have, so they continue to be known as Smith otherwise Harris and not Smith or Harris or even Smith-Harris.  This name indecision was surely the red flag of illegitimacy waving over this generation of Smith otherwise Harrises.    I always really liked the idea that Hannah had thumbed her nose at the Church Dust and their rules and continued to colour with apparently little regard for where the lines were.

Hannah's mother Elizabeth was born in 1781 and had her first child to her husband Thomas Smith in 1800.  Widowed twenty years later she managed to produce a child between the death of Thomas in April 1819 and her second marriage in November 1820 to Robert Harling who was some 15 years her junior.  The child bore the surnames of both Thomas Smith and Robert Harling, she was perhaps just indecisive. 

John Godfrey's family were not always the picture of perfect morality either.  John if you recall is the 'paper' father of Frank who is really the son of Gustaf the Miller.   John's father, also John, in 1821 ran away with the daughter of his benefactor, taking her to London where they married illegally, she using a name not actually her own.   Elizabeth was just 16 years old and by the standards of 1821 and of today was a minor.  Luckily her parents saved  both their daughter’s reputation, and their son in law's neck, by allowing their errant daughter to marry John the following week and the illegal marriage never made it to the official record books.  The path of true love never does run smoothly as the saying goes, and especially with a fair smattering of lust and lies.

These people are five generations of just one of my families and as you can see we have a long history of colouring outside the lines.  If you do by some small chance feel a little uneasy at the revelation of your ancestor's carnal activities, try to remember that without their sex, improper or otherwise you wouldn't exist.