CASE CLOSED: AT LAST
Graham Caldwell finds a long-sought clue, so solving a reader mystery
For a long time now, the tantalising thought that there might be a vital ‘mystery’ document somewhere, that could help Kerr Clement learn more about his father’s step-father, has kept him curious, but perplexed. Here we relate the unfolding steps, that eventually led to the answer he needed. As is the case so often with genealogy ‘brick walls’, it’s not a case of smashing them down, but of finding a way around them.
Kerr Clement had long been trying to find out: ‘What were the papers that his father’s mother showed to the recruiting officer in WW2 to prove that her son, James Clement (born Robertson) was who he said he was despite the surname discrepancy?'
As the document was thought to relate to a record of birth, Kerr had approached Mary Evans at her webinar on solving family history brickwalls (November 2020). Mary came up with the first two explanations: adoption paperwork and/or a deed poll, but dismissed both. As the birth- and name-related documents weren’t shedding any light, Family Tree contacted military researcher Graham Caldwell to see if he could clarify the sorts of documents that the Armed Forces would have deemed acceptable proof.
Here Graham picks up the tale.
Graham writes:
What military proof of ID was required? Certainly by the time of WW2 (unlike WW1) a person’s birth certificate and their identity registration card, proving who they were, were mandatory upon reporting for enlistment following conscription.
Kerr talks about his father James ‘volunteering’, but by 15 February 1940, when James was attested, conscription had been in force since 3 September 1939 (The National Service {Armed Forces} Act 1939) thus ‘volunteering’ was not an option.
James would have been called up, told to bring his identity card and birth certificate with him when reporting, upon which he would have verbally explained that his surname CLEMENT had been the same as his stepfather’s surname since a boy, which did not match his birth certificate in the surname ROBERTSON, hence rejection (or rather an immediate enquiry about just who he was!).
Had he been adopted (after 1927 in England and Wales; after 1930 in Scotland), he would have produced a replacement birth certificate in the surname CLEMENT. I also agree with Mary’s comment that a young man aged 20 would not have bothered with officially changing his name and in any case would have taken with him his deed poll certificate. In addition, because James’s mother, Christina, never married James CLEMENT, I agree with Mary that the authorities would not have sanctioned an official adoption.
Thus what was the situation?
This is a clear case of James’s mother, now in a new relationship, notwithstanding she did not marry James Clement snr, ensured for appearance’s sake that all the family were known locally as the CLEMENTS; her dilemma is not being able to provide the Army with a copy of a marriage certificate.
In fact, as Mary says, James’s school attendance records (a public school with strict codes) had him listed as CLEMENT and would have been none the wiser that his parents had never married (in fact… James natural father, Fred Robertson, was indeed still alive). Mary concluded that the school register entry had probably been the potential document presented by his mother, to the Army, when they returned to the recruitment centre, but I seriously doubt that this would have had sufficient legal standing for Army acceptance.
What can be deduced?
My hypotheses is that the most obvious document accepted by every organisation as a legal document is an affidavit (in Australia we call an affidavit a Statutory Declaration) which once signed and witnessed, can be used as a legal document for evidence in court. If found to be false, the declarer faces a prison sentence. They were first introduced in Britain in 1515! That is, James’s mother went to a local solicitor and paid for a sworn affidavit, which would have declared that since her ‘divorce/widowhood’ (or some such white lie) she had ‘remarried Mr James CLEMENT and that consequently all her ROBERTSON children, including James, ‘have since been known by / and have used’ the surname CLEMENT. However there is no way my hypothesis can be proved, unless such a document was amongst James Robertson/clement’s Army file of paperwork that Kerr Clement says he sent for and now possesses. Having said that… I know of certain ‘sensitive’ documents, particularly of a medical nature, being withheld by MOD Disclosures when a service record has been applied for.
Stepfather’s origins solved!
Irrespective of what document was used, Kerr Clement was delighted with the final result. Kerr’s chief reason for wishing to find the papers presented in 1940 had been to help
Kerr trace his father’s stepfather’s origins and this has been accomplished simply by tackling different records. Graham was able to uncover the origins of Kerr’s father’s stepfather,
James Clement snr, using family location clues in the Glasgow census transcriptions up to 1901 found on Findmypast, which then led to his 1877 Perthshire birth certificate downloaded from Scotlandspeople.
Perhaps this is a useful lesson, one which Family Tree Academy tutor David Annal gently reminds us from time to time: not to get fixated on looking for a record, instead we need to be looking for evidence, in whatever guise that materialises.
About the researchers
Regular readers of Family Tree will be familiar with both Mary Evans’ and Graham Caldwell’s names, as they are frequently to be found helping readers on the Q&A pages of the magazine.