Genealogy Chat

please could any one tell me how this is possible my freind has her birth cert her mam was olive stephenson madien name rowe my freind knew she died in 1966 i looked up that yes olive stephenson died in 1966 but was age 63 when she died that means she would have been 58 when she gave birth ???? well i thought i would look for olives birth to double check and yes she was there olive rowe born 1903 my freind was born 1961 all the paperwork says all the info was correct SO did women really have kids at 58 if not wot is going on plz help i cant work this out ,my freind did hve sisters and brothers older than her thank u

I think it highly unlikely that a 58-year old woman would have a baby. More likely she brought up a child as her own that was perhaps a grandchild. Are you sure that the death cert is for the same woman? nell

There are 3 Olive Rowe births in 1903 on Ancestry civil reg. nell

The Guinness Book of Records gives 53 as the oldest woman PROVED to have given birth, having conceived naturally - this in pre-IVF/65 year-old-mothers being artificially enabled to conceive a child. So, in the 1960s, 58 was too old to give birth. You either have the wrong death cert, or you have Granny registering the child as her own, not uncommon I believe. Was your friend baptised? The Church Records may tell the truth - most people quailed at lying in the house of God, even if they didnt mind telling a porkie to the Registrar. Olde Crone

Moses's wife was in her 80's when she had another baby. Though the churches have us to believe!

I to would have said that the mother registered and raised probably, her daughters child .so infact the 'late' child that called her Mum should ,although she knew her as Mum, should really have called her Gran. Jess x

I remember just a few years ago a woman in Wales claimed to have given birth at some similar age and it transpired that she was trying to pass her daughter's baby off as her own because she thought there was such a stigma attached to 'illegitimacy', even in this day and age! The daughter told her partner that she had had her baby adopted, and because there wasn't much contact between her partner and her mother the partner apparently didn't notice that the mother had a new baby at just the same time. I think the whole story finally came out because the hospital where the (grand)mother was supposed to have given birth had no record of it, but as I remember it she had successfully done the same thing with the daughter's first baby. Kate.