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I recently joined FIBIS so first of all let me just say hello to everyone!
My link to India is my grandfather Merrill Vivian Jacobs (1917-1967). He was the son of Walter Jacobs and the brother of Cyril Spencer Jacobs (1912-1979). All the research I have been able to find is on his Wikitree page here.
From my DNA ancestry I believe Merrill was native South Asian, but I’m struggling to square this with his Western name and the fact that his father and brother both served in the civil service. I currently have two hypotheses…
1) Walter was a white Anglo-Indian government employee who had a son, Cyril, and later adopted a native child, Merrill.
2) Walter was native Indian but worked in the civil service as did his son Cyril, and Merrill was his biological son too.
Has anyone found any similar situations to this? Were these sorts of adoptions common?
Many thanks in advance.
Interesting post. My Grandfather was in Ahmednagar from the mid-1920s until his death in 1945. I’d respectfully suggest you ignore the DNA result and focus hard on the paper-trail. Look at the India Office Records (available at Findmypast.co.uk) and the FIBIS records. Build up your tree starting with yourself, working backwards to your grandfather and further back. With ‘western’ names, it is likely they were Anglo-Indian. But the interesting part will be to find out (which you will) who was the ‘Anglo’ (typically a man) and who the ‘Indian’ (typically the mother of his children). I have a possible adoption issue going back to the mid-1840s in Madras, but I don’t believe adoption of children was a formal procedure. Good luck! Andrew.
Andrew
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