The same story, told in multiple perspectives and formats including song.
A Baby, a Blessing, and a Bastardy Case
An unexpected chapter in our Hurley family history
Being a single mother today doesn't carry nearly the stigma it once did. Even when I was in high school in the 1970s, an unmarried pregnancy could still be considered a family scandal.
We've already explored stories of unmarried mothers in our family during the 1930s. But throughout history, children have been born outside marriage far more often than we might imagine. Each generation seems to think it invented sex, and somehow we're still surprised to discover that our ancestors were getting up to the very same things!
When you picture an unmarried mother in the nineteenth century, what comes to mind?
A woman forced to wear a scarlet letter? A family disgraced? A young mother unable to marry, struggling in poverty, or forced to surrender her baby to an orphanage?
Certainly, women experienced terrible hardships in different times and places. Some were rejected by their families or communities. Others faced choices no mother should ever have to make.
But that isn't the story I want to tell today.
This is a story from Civil War-era New Jersey, where an unmarried mother's circumstances became the subject of a legal proceeding with a rather startling name: a bastardy case.
Yes, bastardy. That was the actual legal terminology.
And while the word sounds downright insulting to modern ears, these proceedings served a practical purpose. They were an early means of establishing paternity and requiring financial support for children born outside marriage.
The township had an interest in making sure the child's expenses didn't become a burden on public funds. The mother could identify the man she believed to be the father, and he had an opportunity to defend himself. If the justices found him responsible, they could order him to contribute toward the child's care.
It wasn't quite the modern child-support system, and it certainly wasn't designed entirely around the rights of mothers and children. But it did recognize that a father could have financial responsibilities whether or not he married the mother.
And it brings us to a young woman in our own family.
Meet Margaret Ann Hurley
Margaret Ann Hurley, one of Thom's second great-grandmothers, was born around 1842 and lived in Middletown Township, Monmouth County, New Jersey. Her parents were Hudson Hurley and Eleanor, also known as Ellen, Bennett Hurley.
On June 13, 1864, while the Civil War was still raging, Margaret Ann gave birth to a baby boy at her father's home.
She was unmarried and about 21 years old.
The very next day, Margaret Ann appeared in a sworn examination before a local justice of the peace. She identified the baby's father as Anthony Shafto, a farmer from nearby Shrewsbury Township.
And Anthony had a rather interesting circumstance of his own.
He had married Rebecca Morris less than six months earlier!
Now, before we jump to conclusions, a little arithmetic is in order. Assuming Margaret Ann's baby arrived at approximately full term, he would have been conceived around September 1863, about three months before Anthony married Rebecca.
What happened between Margaret Ann and Anthony? Was there a romance? A broken promise? Did Rebecca know anything about the situation?
We simply don't know.
But the records tell us that Anthony denied being the baby's father.
The authorities heard the matter and ultimately ruled that Anthony was the child's reputed father. He was ordered to pay $77 toward the expenses of Margaret Ann's confinement and the baby's care, followed by $2 a week for continued support.
And apparently Anthony wasn't ready to let the matter rest.
His older brother, Dewitt Shafto, joined him in signing a substantial financial recognizance, essentially a legal promise backed by a penalty if Anthony failed to fulfill the required conditions.
That is where the story might have ended, except that the Hurley family had a few more connections to this little drama.
One of the township's Overseers of the Poor, who helped initiate the legal proceedings, was Sylvester W. Hurley.
And Sylvester appears to have been Margaret Ann's uncle!
So here we have a young mother, her alleged baby's father, his brother, and potentially her own uncle, all drawn into the proceedings.
A family affair, with the local government invited along!
But what happened to the baby?
This, to me, is the best part of the story.
The little boy was not named in the court documents. He was referred to only by the rather impersonal legal description of a male bastard child.
But other records provide a compelling answer to his identity.
I believe he was John Arthur Hurley.
In the 1870 census, six-year-old John was living in the household of Hudson and Ellen Hurley, along with their daughter Margaret Ann.
Later records identify a John Arthur Hurley born in New Jersey in June 1864, matching the month and year of Margaret Ann's baby's birth. His death certificate even gives his birthday as June 13, although the year is recorded incorrectly.
John grew up and made a life for himself. By 1900, he was living in Pennsylvania and working as a minister. Later records place him in Illinois.
And here's a touching detail.
When John married Lin Zimmerman, his marriage record identified his parents as Hudson Hurley and Ellen Bennett.
Not Margaret Ann. Not Anthony Shafto.
Hudson and Ellen. His grandparents.
Whether John knew the circumstances of his birth, or simply considered the grandparents who raised him to be his mother and father, we may never know.
But clearly, he belonged to their household. And whatever the legal papers called him, he had a name, a family, and a future.
And one last little mystery
I can't resist mentioning one final coincidence.
Anthony Shafto's father was named John Shafto.
And Margaret Ann's little boy was John Arthur Hurley.
Was he named for Anthony's father? Did Margaret Ann choose the name to acknowledge the Shafto family? Did Anthony have anything to say about it?
Or was John simply a family name chosen for entirely different reasons?
We don't know, but it's certainly intriguing.
And DNA has given us another reason to keep investigating. I've found multiple DNA match trees containing the Shafto surname. That isn't proof of a biological connection, but it gives us another trail to follow.
Because in genealogy, the end of one story usually turns out to be the beginning of another.
A blessing on our house
I discovered this story in a collection of thirteen pages of nineteenth-century legal papers. They contain sworn statements, warrants, signatures, court orders, and even little Civil War revenue stamps.
The officials were concerned with responsibility, money, and protecting the township from the expense of supporting a child.
And yes, the whole business was conducted openly enough to leave an extraordinary paper trail for us to discover more than 160 years later.
The documents tell us about the law. They tell us about Anthony's denial and Margaret Ann's determination to name him. They tell us about financial obligations and public responsibility.
But they cannot tell us what Margaret Ann felt when she first held her baby, or what Hudson and Ellen thought when they welcomed another child into their home.
Those are the parts of the story that matter most to me.
So I'm curious.
Are you surprised that nineteenth-century communities had legal procedures for these situations?
Does the word bastardy make you cringe?
Or, like me, do you look beyond the scandal, the judgments, and the legal language, and see something wonderfully simple?
A BABY! A BLESSING ON OUR HOUSE!
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The Story of Ellen Hurley, a Grandmother's Love, and a Baby Born in 1864
# There's Room in This House
What does a grandmother see when she looks at a newborn grandchild?
Does she see the circumstances of the baby's conception? The marital status of the parents? The financial burden of another mouth to feed?
Or does she see ten tiny fingers, ten tiny toes, and a new little person to love?
I know what I saw when I learned I was going to become a grandmother. My son wasn't married, and that made absolutely no difference to the joy I felt. I was thrilled! There was a baby coming into our family, and that was reason enough to celebrate.
But what if I had been a grandmother in 1864?
Would I have felt differently? Would the expectations of society have dampened my happiness? Would I have been more concerned about what the neighbors might think?
I'd like to believe that love would have won out then, too.
And that brings me to Ellen Hurley.
## A Baby Comes Home
In June of 1864, Margaret Ann Hurley, an unmarried young woman of about 21, gave birth to a baby boy in Middletown Township, New Jersey.
She delivered her child at the home of her father, Hudson Hurley, where her mother, Eleanor Bennett Hurley, known as Ellen, also lived.
We know the exact date because the following day, Margaret Ann gave a sworn statement identifying Anthony Shafto as the baby's father.
The legal proceedings that followed are preserved in a collection of remarkable nineteenth-century documents. There were warrants, hearings, financial obligations, and a court order requiring Anthony to contribute toward the child's support.
The officials referred to the baby as a "bastard child." That was the accepted legal terminology of the time.
But I wonder what Ellen called him.
Did she cradle him in her arms and whisper sweet little names into his ear? Did she proudly show him off to relatives? Did she rock him to sleep while Margaret Ann rested?
We don't know.
Those tender moments, if they happened, weren't the sort of things anyone recorded in the courthouse.
The law was interested in the child's financial support.
A grandmother might have been interested in something else entirely.
## The House That Made Room
Hudson Hurley had practical matters to consider. There was another child in the household, and children needed food, clothing, and shelter.
The township's Overseers of the Poor pursued the paternity case to establish who should be financially responsible for the baby's maintenance. Interestingly, one of those officials, Sylvester W. Hurley, appears to have been Margaret Ann's uncle.
The family's private circumstances had become a matter of public record.
I can imagine Hudson worrying about expenses and responsibility. I can imagine Margaret Ann worrying about her reputation and her future.
And I can imagine Ellen sitting quietly with the baby, thinking that everyone else could do their worrying while she enjoyed the newest member of her family.
Of course, that is imagination, not documented history.
But here is something we do know: six years later, in the 1870 census, a little boy named John was living in Hudson and Ellen's household, along with Margaret Ann.
The child hadn't disappeared into an institution or vanished from the family records.
He was there, in the family home.
And the evidence strongly suggests that this little boy was John Arthur Hurley, born June 13, 1864.
## What Did Grandma Ellen Teach Him?
The next part of the story is the one I find most touching.
John grew up, left New Jersey, and eventually became a minister.
By 1900, he was living in Johnsonburg, Pennsylvania, where the census identified his occupation as minister. Later records place him in Illinois.
And that makes me wonder about Ellen.
Was she a woman of faith? Did she carry her grandson into church on Sunday mornings? Did she teach him his prayers, tell him Bible stories, or sing hymns while she worked around the house?
Did she ever have to comfort him after an unkind remark about his parentage?
I picture a grandmother walking proudly into church with a little boy holding her hand, daring anyone to suggest he didn't belong.
It's a lovely picture, but I cannot claim it happened.
We don't know what Ellen believed, how often she attended church, or what influence she had on John's eventual calling.
Still, the possibility is hard to ignore.
Somewhere along the way, that little boy grew into a man who devoted himself to ministry.
The records preserve the circumstances of his birth, but his life became so much more than those circumstances.
## Who Was His Mother?
There is another detail that makes me think about Ellen's place in John's life.
When John married Lin Zimmerman, his marriage record identified his parents as Hudson Hurley and Ellen Bennett.
Those were his maternal grandparents.
His death certificate also named Hudson as his father, although his mother's name was recorded as unknown.
We cannot say for certain whether John understood his biological parentage, whether the information reflected the family relationship he had always known, or whether someone else supplied those details.
But the marriage record is especially suggestive.
When asked to identify his parents, the names recorded were Hudson and Ellen.
Perhaps they were simply the people who had filled those roles in his life.
I don't believe this diminishes Margaret Ann's importance. She was his mother, and she was still living in the household when John was six. We don't know how the responsibilities of raising him were shared.
There was room for Margaret Ann to be his mother and for Ellen to become another deeply important maternal figure.
Families don't always fit neatly into the boxes on official forms. They didn't in 1864, and they don't today.
## What the Records Cannot Tell Us
We have court documents that tell us what Margaret Ann said about Anthony Shafto.
We have the judgment declaring Anthony the child's reputed father, despite his denial.
We have financial figures, legal signatures, and even Civil War revenue stamps.
We have census records that help us follow John into adulthood.
But we have no diary from Ellen.
No letter in which she describes holding her grandson for the first time.
No account of his first steps, his childhood mischief, or the moment she might have realized that little John had a calling to preach.
And that is one of the great frustrations of family history.
The records tell us about births, deaths, money, property, and disputes. They are much less generous with the everyday affection that holds families together.
So sometimes, with a clear understanding of where the documentation ends, I think it's all right to imagine.
I imagine Ellen holding that baby while the adults around her discussed responsibility and reputation.
I imagine her looking into his little face and wondering what sort of man he might become.
And I imagine her saying something very simple:
"There's room in this house."
## A Baby, a Blessing
I don't know whether Ellen welcomed John's birth with the same unrestrained happiness I felt when I learned I was going to be a grandmother.
I hope she did.
I hope Margaret Ann found comfort in having her parents nearby. I hope little John Arthur knew affection and security in the house where he was born.
And I hope that whatever words the courts or neighbors used to describe him, those words never defined the way he saw himself.
Because a child's worth has nothing to do with whether his parents were married.
It didn't in 1864.
It doesn't today.
The courthouse had its name for him.
But in the Hurley household, perhaps there was another name: Our baby.
And if Grandma Ellen felt anything like this grandmother does, I suspect her response to the whole situation might have been wonderfully uncomplicated.
A baby! A blessing on our house!
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### A note about this story
This account was inspired by original 1864 bastardy proceedings involving Margaret Ann Hurley and Anthony Shafto, along with census, marriage, and death records concerning John Arthur Hurley.
The documented evidence strongly supports John's identification as Margaret Ann's son and establishes that he grew up in the household of Hudson and Ellen Hurley.
Ellen's thoughts, conversations, religious practices, and feelings about her grandson are not recorded in the documents available to us. Those passages are affectionate historical imaginings, inspired by the family relationships and by my own experience as a grandmother.