Illegitimate Children and Unwed Mothers

“For my sake, father and mother

Sit in great hearts.

Do not worry, Father and Mother,

I shall bring you no shame:

I shall not hang a cradle

While wearing a maiden’s wreath.” – traditional Latvian daina folk song

Kristaps Rozenvalds, Son of Anne

Kristaps Rozenvalds is my husband’s great-great-grandfather, and he was one of the first ancestors I discovered when I started looking into this family history. He claimed in his post-WWI documents that he was born February 2 1852 in Jekabnieki, a small manor just south of Jelgava. In his 1920 internal passport document he lists this birthdate and his father’s name as ‘Gerdardad’. His sister, Lavize Rozenberg, also lists this name as her father’s name.

One of my first steps then was to look for him in the Zalenieki Lutheran church records. He wasn’t there. There were no babies named Kristaps Rozenvalds, Rozentals or Rozenbergs born in that parish in 1852 or even a few years on either side. What to do? Was his baptism registered in a different church? Was the birthdate totally wrong? What was going on?

I requested Kristaps’s death record from 1935 and this also says his birthdate is February 2 1852, but has no father’s name, stating that it isn’t known. That was strange. His daughter, Olga, was the informant after his death. Wouldn’t she have known the name of her own grandfather? What did this mean?

Kristaps’s birth remained a mystery until I found a local census document from Zalenieki from the 1890s which listed Kristaps Rozenvalds and his wife and children. Fantastic!! I was very surprised when I saw his birthdate as being in March 1858. That is a whole six years later than his other documents say! Not only that, but there is a small note where the name of his father should be that states that he was the illegitimate child of ‘Anne’.

This was quite an unexpected turn of events. Using this information I went onto the online church records (on Ciltskoki) and looked through the records for Zalenieki Lutheran church for any boy named Kristaps born in 1858 to an unmarried ‘maiden’ named Anne. It didn’t take long to find a baptism for ‘Kristaps Rudzit’, baptized 25^th March 1858, born to the maiden Anne Rudzit at Raggenhof (the small manor just next to Jekabnieki). This was our Kristaps at last!! It took several years to find this, but better late than never.

So, the question now was, why did Kristaps lie about his age and his father’s name in his documents and how did it come about that his name ended up as Rozenvalds and not Rudzit? This led me to research what it was like for women who had children out-of-wedlock in the Baltics in the 19^th century and what it was like for their children who had no legitimate paternity.

Pre-Marital Sex in the Baltics in the 19th Century

The available information regarding taboo sexual issues in the Russian Empire in the 19^th century is sketchy. Needless to say, it was not a topic most people wanted to talk about. But there are some historians who have written enough to put together a general picture of this aspect of life in and around Latvia.

The attitudes towards pre-marital sex prior to the abolition of serfdom may have been looser and more relaxed than elsewhere in Europe; certainly, than the rest of European Russia. It isn’t 100% clear why this was, but some theories are:

• Christian sexual morality was not as entrenched in the Baltics as this was the last European area to be Christianised
• Serfs had to seek permission from their masters to marry and if permission was not given, a couple might just live in a kind of civil union
• There was no culture of father-to-son inheritance to worry about under serfdom
• There may have been a strong awareness of birth control methods

According to an article by Professor Mati Laur:

“August Wilhelm Hupel (1737–1819), the pastor of Põltsamaa’s church and one of the more renowned disseminators of Enlightenment ideas in the Baltic lands, presented the claim in his article “On the value of virginity among Estonians and Latvians”, which was published in 1791, that preserving virginity was not all that valued among the peasantry because Estonians and Latvians had no idea whatsoever of virginity. Hupel’s “discovery” can be interpreted as a reference to the peasantry’s low level of education and culture. Yet, greater sexual freedom and the absence of taboos, which other estates of society could not allow for themselves, compensated for that.”

Another reason often cited was the Lutheran rule that someone could not be married if they had not passed their confirmation exams. This excluded young people who could not pass the exams. This could sometimes mean that one or both parties were forced to cohabitate outside of marriage with any children from their union being legally illegitimate.

It is also a widely held belief that it was common for young unmarried men of the Baltic German nobility to ‘have their way’ with their young farm hands or house servants with few repercussions. I could not find actual statistics on this, but it seems likely to be another reason for pre-marital sex at this time.

Another reason for out-of-wedlock pregnancies cited in the 1800s were promises of marriage. If a suitor verbally promised marriage, it was common for parents to allow their daughters to engage in sexual relations. But in many cases, the suitor would renege on that offer, leaving his lover tainted and facing the shame of having a fatherless child.

If anyone, male or female, were found to be guilty of the crime of ‘fornication’ (pre-marital sex) then they would both be punished with either a monetary fine and/or public lashes and religious penance. This applied whether or not there was a pregnancy involved.

As effects from the abolition of serfdom in the 1830s started to be felt, and the Lutheran Church had taken a greater hold on the indigenous population, ideas around women’s sexuality and extra-marital relations changed somewhat. Peasant families now had more possibilities of owning wealth, and that wealth needed to be passed down to their sons. Farming families were also given surnames that would be passed on to their children through male lines; these names were also a kind of wealth or status. Legitimacy started to matter more because of changes like these. This also meant that the level of shame that came with a young women falling pregnant became harsher.

This attitude was enshrined in many of the Latvian folk songs, known as daina, such as the one that began this post. In that poem, a daughter is ensuring her parents that she would not bring shame upon them by having a child out-of-wedlock or ‘hanging the cradle’. The wreath mentioned was a traditional head decoration worn by brides on their wedding day that symbolized virginity.

Although society subscribed to a double standard when it came to sexuality between men and women and falling pregnant before marriage could be devastating for those involved, women were not entirely helpless in the eyes of the law.

An Unmarried Mother’s Options

According to some data collected in the early 1860s, the percentage of illegitimate births in Courland (of total births) was 4.86% per year and in Riga is was 8.5% per year. This percentage remained steady throughout the 19^th century and was clearly more of a problem in urban areas then in rural ones. Also, these percentages varied by religion. Lutheran births were close to the overall averages, while Catholics were less and Orthodox and Old Believers were higher. Jewish statistics show almost no illegitimate births.

The best scenario a young woman could hope for, is that if she found herself pregnant, the father of her child would marry her. If the marriage was performed before the birth of the child, then there was no illegitimacy recorded. In any other case, a baptism record would usually record only the mother’s name and sometimes her father’s name. The record of the baptism would be counted specifically as a child of an unwed mother. See how that is recorded in the example here:

Although, I have run across a baptism for a child of an unwed mother with the name of the child’s father listed. In this case, the young woman had not yet completed confirmation lessons and so would not have been able to marry, even if the father had wanted to. This illegitimate child was in the confirmation records years later and still retained the surname of her mother, which indicates that the couple did not marry.

But if the time came to have the child, and no marriage had occurred, the young woman might find herself feeling hopeless, scared and desperate. How desperate one might have felt depended on several factors including the mother’s socio-economic status, religion, family support and how many previous illegitimate births she had had. Sadly, three not uncommon choices were available that many young women felt forced to make:

• suicide
• killing the child
• abandoning the child

According to some statistics, up into the 20^th century a large percentage of overall suicides were of unwed mothers who saw no hope in their situation. In Riga in 1926, 31% of murders were of new-born babies. This amounted to about 40-50 baby deaths in Riga per year in this era. This was definitely more of an urban issue. It was harder to hide a problem pregnancy in rural settings and family support was stronger in the countryside than it was for women who had moved to the cities, often by themselves, for work. The third option on that list, abandonment, I will discuss in a moment.

Even if there was no marriage proposal, a father could offer to acknowledge the child. In this case, the father would be obliged to pay a kind of child support until the child was 10-years-old (in the case of Vidzeme) or until a child could support themselves (in the case of Kurzeme).

If the man indicated as being the father did not marry the mother and refused to acknowledge the child or the sexual relationship, then a lawsuit could be brought against him. (This was not the case in other parts of the Russian Empire, with high literacy rates in the Baltics and Lutheranism being two of the main reasons why.) Paternity was not easy for a court to ascertain in those days of course. Many cases were successful though, and the father was forced to pay the child support. However, if the mother was accused of being ‘loose’ or having had sexual relationships with more than one person, then even if paternity was proven, the father only had to pay a one-off payment and was not obliged to offer continuous child support because the woman was deemed ‘undeserving’.

It was much easier and less complicated if the woman bringing the charges stated in the records that she had been ‘seduced’. If a woman admitted that the sexual relationship had been consensual, it could damage her case or her reputation. Because of this, it is very hard to really get to the truth of the nature of pre-marital relationships through court records.

When it came time for the birth, it was common for the young woman to be carted off to a nearby estate or manor where she might not be as well-known. I have seen this a few times in records over the years and it may have been the case with Anne Rudzit as well. Anne was from the Kalnamuizas manor, about 50km west of Raggenhof, where Kristaps was born.

Whether or not a young unmarried woman with a child was able to get financial support from the father, there still remained the question of how this child would be raised and by whom. Even if a man acknowledged the child willingly, the child had no right to property, money, social status or surname from the father or his family. Most children probably ended up being raised by the single mother and extended family or godparents. Many mothers with illegitimate children in their care still ended up marrying.

This happened to two Zekants women in the 1800s. Lavize Zekants (daughter of Indriks Sekant) had a child out-of-wedlock in 1853 when she was 22 years old. This child, Karl, is not seen in the records again. Lavize ended up marrying Prizz Porschman in 1855.

Bille Zekants (sister to Jekob), had a child out-of-wedlock in 1872. Her son, also named Jekob, is also not seen in the records again. Bille married a man named Perkins at some time before 1890.

A woman’s new husband could opt to adopt the illegitimate child and could then allow him or her to use his surname. Did these husbands adopt these children and so they would not be in the records as ‘Zekants’ anymore? Or did the children take new names for themselves upon reaching adulthood? More research would needed to find out.

Living as Illegitimate

“Though my mother, when I was small,

Had thrown me into the water:

I would not have grown large,

I would not have seen hardship.” – traditional Latvian daina folk song

This daina is from the perspective of an illegitimate child lamenting the hard life they have had to endure and reflecting that it may have been better if their mother had chosen to drown them instead. My husband and I are very thankful that Anne Rudzit did not choose this option! But how did Kristaps feel? We know that Kristaps was illiterate, but his slightly younger, legitimate, sister was not. Did this mean he did not have the same access to education as others because of his ‘bastard’ status?

As of 1864, a person who was illegitimate had all the same civil rights as anyone else and they were not to be blamed for their illegitimacy. This did not necessarily manifest in real life however. Folk songs like the one above hint at the hardships that people growing up with the stigma of illegitimacy had to bear. For children who were abandoned, this hardship was even more pronounced as they had no parents at all.

Child abandonment was probably the most common of those three desperate choices listed above. A woman could give birth, often alone, and then wrap up the baby and place it somewhere where it could be found, for example on the steps of a church or at a train station. This was a criminal act on the part of the mother and if discovered she would incur a punishment. The severity of the punishment would vary depending on where she had left the child. If it was left in a location where it would be easily found, the punishment was less severe than if the child was left in a more out-of-the-way place where it might have never been found.

Once noticed, these ‘foundlings’ were then either taken to a ‘foundling house’ or orphanage or placed with paid foster carers. The law allowed for these children to be baptized in the Lutheran Church, so regardless of the religion of the mother, they would most likely end up Lutheran. Children could be adopted from an orphanage, but many were not. Mortality rates were thought to be quite high for these abandoned babies and life was far from pleasant.

There were not many facilities to deal with all of these babies in the Baltic provinces. Because of this, is was not unheard of for there to be black market networks where a mother would pay a fee to have her baby transported to one of the big orphanages in Moscow or St. Petersburg. Some of the homes that did exist in what is today Latvia and Estonia, were hard to get into, only accepting children over three-years-old for example or only accepting Lutherans. According to police reports in Revel (modern-day Tallinn), the proliferation of homeless children living on the streets was a real problem at the turn of the 20^th century.

Sometimes foster carers were found to take in these abandoned children. However, the families taking them were often unscrupulous and saw the situation as a way to acquire cheap labour for their own financial benefit. Life was very bad for children in this situation.

As the 19^th century approached the 20^th, there was a growing awareness across the world of social problems and an increasing popularity of philanthropic organizations. This meant some improvements in the conditions of the care of these children. There was also an awareness of women’s rights and independence. The writer and playwright, Aspazija, caused a sensation in 1895 with her play titled ‘Lost Rights (Zaudētās tiesības)’ which criticized marriage and the gender double standards in society.

What’s in a Name?

One complication for these children was a surname. A child was not able to use their biological father’s surname if the parents were not married. He or she could use the surname of their mother or even choose a new surname for themselves once they were old enough to do so. Sometimes a patronymic or some adaptation of a biological father’s surname could be used.

In the Russian Empire, a patronymic was a very important part of one’s identity and a fatherless person would always be at a disadvantage. This was literally part of your name. In Latvia this might look like:

Žanis Zekants d. Jēkaba

The ‘d’ means ‘son of’ and ‘Jēkaba’ refers to the father’s name as Jekab.

Or in Russian it would be

Жанис Екабович Зекантс (Zhanis Yekabovich Zekants)

What was someone to do if they had no father’s name? This would be a real problem in an age where filling out forms and needing ID documents was becoming more and more necessary.

So, Kristaps was born ‘Rudzit’. Then when he was two years old, around 1860, his mother, Anne Rudzit, married a man named Geddert Rozenberg (Geddert Rozenberg was the paternal grandfather of the writer Aspazija, Elza Rozenberga). Geddert and Anne had a daughter, Lavize Rozenberg, in 1861. Only a few months after her birth, Geddert died. We don’t have any record of Kristaps until his marriage in 1883. In that marriage record he is using the name ‘Rozentals’. He uses the name ‘Rozentals’ for the birth of all four of his children.

My guess is that he was not legally adopted by his step-fathe,r and so was not entitled to use the name ‘Rozenberg’. Earlier in the 19^th century, when surnames were first being adopted, Geddert had actually used the name ‘Rozentals’. For unknown reasons, by 1856 he was going by ‘Rozenberg’. It would have made things much easier for Anne, now a widow, to get her illegitimate son a surname as close to hers as possible. Maybe this is why Kristaps used ‘Rozentals’.

Why then in 1890 and 1920, is he using the name ‘Rozenvalds’? This we may never know. And why did he say that his father’s name was ‘Geddert’? In 1920, Kristaps and his sister and their families had evacuated Riga to live in the far-northern town of Rujiena. After Latvia finally gained its independence in 1920, ID documents were issued. Kristaps was a long way from the town of his birth and the nation had been through hell and back. No one was going to know if he lied about his father, who was now long dead anyway. It would have been far easier to just use the same father’s name as his sister, who he was living with, and start the rest of his life fresh, severing the old stigma of illegitimacy.

His family knew the truth though. Kristaps’s grandson, Žanis (John) Zekants, who was my husband’s grandfather wrote in his diary that his Aunt Lavize was a ‘cousin of Aspazija’. He said it in a way that indicated he knew that his grandfather, Kristaps, was not a biological relative of Aspazija. (Note that Lavize was actually an aunt to Aspazija even though by age they were pretty much of the same generation, Lavize being born in 1861 and Aspazija in 1864.)

Changes to the Law

As the decades went by and ruling powers came and went, laws changed regarding illegitimate children and their parents.

In 1890, out-of-wedlock cases in the Baltic provinces changed from criminal to civil cases.

In 1902, married men (who had previously been exempt from any criminal culpability or financial obligation for extra-marital children) would no longer be protected. They could now be brought to court and could be forced to acknowledge their illegitimate children and support them financially.

In 1937, with the adoption of the Civil Law of the Republic of Latvia, once paternity was established, the child was able to take on the surname of the father just as if the child had been born within the bounds of marriage.

During the Soviet-era (1944-1991), the term ‘illegitimate’ was abolished in legal code. There were back and forth rules regarding paternal responsibility, but by the 1960s, children born out-of-wedlock enjoyed more equality than ever before.

When Latvia re-established independence in 1991, they re-instated the 1937 Civil Code with many changes, including the new law which established that as long as paternity had been legally established, a child born to unmarried parents would benefit from the same inheritance rules as those children born within the bounds of marriage.

And in 1992, Latvia ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. This permanently solidified the principle of non-discrimination based on parental marital status.

Since the break-up of the Soviet Union and in line with many other nations, the percentage of births outside of marriage in Latvia and Estonia has increased, at 37% and 50% respectively.

A lot has changed since that cold day in March 1858, when young Anne Rudzit gave birth to her ‘fatherless’ son. We will probably never know what the circumstances were that led to Anne’s pregnancy and who her son’s father really was. Anne would be amazed to see a world where unwed mothers and children born outside of marriage have far more legal rights, less social stigma and the same chances at a bright future as everyone else.

Here are some of the fascinating and informative sources that I used for this article if you want to learn more:

• Social Welfare Provision at the Imperial Edge: Single Mothers and Abandoned Children in the Late Russian Empire by Siobhán Hearne
• Stigmatized cohabitation in the Latvian region of the Eastern Baltic littoral: 19th & 20th centuries by Andrejs Plakans and Ineta Lipsa
• Bitter Fruits of “A Merry Life?” Survival Chances of Children Born Out of Wedlock in 19th Century Rural Estonia by Kersti Lust
• Proportion of live births outside marriage by country
• Sexual freedoms and absence of taboos in 18th century Livonian village society by Mati Laur
• The Civil Law of Latvia