How illegitimacy was recorded
Parish registers and revision lists had a set of telltale notes for an illegitimate child. The most eloquent was an entry of the form 'Yepifan, by his godfather Gavrilov Bobrov'. It meant the child had no lawful father, and the surname came from the godfather's name, the only man who had taken on any responsibility at all.
Other forms: a dash in the column for the father, or the words 'illegitimate', 'born out of wedlock', 'of an unknown father'. Later documents use the phrasing 'the peasant maiden so-and-so' with no husband named, a sure sign the child was born outside marriage.
Social consequences: a mark for generations
A real case from Family Relic's practice, recorded by the genealogist Daria Yugatova, shows the trace illegitimacy left in family relations. In Bryansk region two lines lived side by side, the Cossack Khotsanoks and the peasant Bobrovs. When Yekaterina Khotsanok married Konstantin Bobrov, her parents disowned their daughter. For decades the families did not speak. No one understood the coldness; Konstantin was a respected man, a Civil War veteran, a solid householder.
The answer was in a revision list of 1850. Konstantin's father, Yepifan, was recorded as 'Yepifan, by his godfather Gavrilov Bobrov'. Illegitimate. His widowed mother 'brought a child in her apron', and though the boy got the surname Bobrov, by blood he did not belong to the family. The Cossack Khotsanok line, proud of its 'clean' direct descent, found this unforgivable, even two generations later.
What illegitimate children were called
The folk names for such children speak plainly of how society saw them: ublyudok, vyrodok, baystryuk, skolotny, polovinkin syn. These words appear in documents, in memoirs, in court cases. The belief was that 'a flaw in the blood cannot be washed out by wealth or by merit'.
Legal consequences in the Russian Empire
An illegitimate child in the Russian Empire was badly cut off in rights. He could not inherit the father's surname or property, nor claim his estate status. Children of noble families born out of wedlock had no right to nobility. That is why the documents include court cases over 'correcting' parish entries, attempts to recognise a child as legitimate after the fact or, the other way round, to strip that status. One of our genealogists, Denis Potanin, found a 1917 case: the Irkutsk spiritual consistory ruled to strike the father's name from a boy's register entry and recognise him as born out of wedlock, on the basis of documents twenty years old.
How to search for illegitimate ancestors
The first sign is unusual wording in parish registers or revision lists. The second is a missing patronymic or an atypical one, from a godfather's name rather than a biological father's. The third is a surname that clearly differs in origin from neighbouring entries on the same family.
If you suspect illegitimacy in your line, look for: the birth record (the father's column in particular), revision lists (where the notes were clearer), confession lists (the family makeup), and court cases on recognising or contesting paternity in the fonds of the spiritual consistories.
Found a puzzling note in an ancestor's documents? The genealogists at Family Relic will work out any family secret. Request a search at myrodoslovie.ru
