Anybody else know you should have a different surname?

Question

My great-grandfather and his first wife parted company, and while she was still alive he took another 'wife', my great-grandmother. The children should have had her name and not his. Any others with another surname, now sanctioned by time, and how did it happen?

By coincidence they're both famous Civil War surnames, so if I added the other surname it would make me look like some Civil War buff.

Answer 1

So you're a fourth generation bastard (since it was illegal for your Great Grandfather to marry your Great Grandmother with his first wife still alive). Or as they say in Japan, "You come from a long line of batchelors". So what's new?

Answer 2

Actually, typically the children of a relationship like that would still have the father's name even if they're not married. They may have had the mother's last name if the father was still married to the first wife and wanted to keep the children from her.

If the second "wife's" kids were biologically his, you have the right surname.

There's a rumor that I overheard one time that someone in my dad's line cheated on her husband and we should have a different surname. I haven't confirmed any of it yet, though.

Answer 3

In my own family tree, mothers have given children their father's last name although the parents weren't married and other mothers have gone the other way and given their children their own last name. So personally, I don't think it's a question of "should" or "shouldn't", especially in this day and age. Claim your mother or father's last name. It's your family either way.