Clandestine Families

Secret/hidden Families

where the children and parent(s) are together, but one parent is not openly acknowledged.

Men and women have been hiding secret families since the days of Abraham and Hagar. You might even have an ancestor with a second (or third or fourth) family! Some can be added to the projects listed below, but others don't quite fit - this is a project to accommodate those peculiar circumstances! Please add the parents involved and their children to this project.

See also

Bigamists

Legendary Libertines

Polygamists

Famous Playboys of the World

Scandalous Women

Royal Mistresses and Illegitimate Children

Royal Mistress

Please add relevant GENi profiles to this project, or make notes in the list below of further candidates or examples who are not yet on GENi. Please make suggestions regarding further scenarios that have not yet been outlined in this project.

The circumstances arising which are covered by this project -

include -

✔︎ "Men with multiple, concurrent families" (not bigamists because they didn't marry all the mothers of their children)
✔︎ Bigamists - also secret families - the bigamist can be in both projects; the children would be in the clandestine family project only. See Bigamists
✔︎ Slave & Indian families (usually "known of" by the official wife)
✔︎ Families "hidden" from officialdom for legal reasons (e.g. banned relationships Apartheid, race etc.)
✔︎ Secret families who have no idea of each other's existence
✔︎ Women who sent their children out to foster or be adopted, stayed in touch, but neglected to inform other family members.

but exclude -

✘ Non-married partnerships
✘ Acknowledged (or otherwise) mistresses & concubines of the nobility
✘ Nobility / royalty

Please make suggestions regarding further scenarios that should or should not be included in this project -

Contact Anne-Marie, Erica, June or Terry with your suggestions, or start a discussion linked to this project]

The following are some people (not all notable) who were "transgressors".
Names with Bold links are to Geni profiles or projects. Other links take you to external biographical web pages.

K

● Charles Kuralt - host of CBS Sunday Morning maintained a second family for 29 years with a woman he met as CBS’s “On the Road” correspondent. He bought an estate in Montana for Patricia Elizabeth Shannon and her three children from a previous marriage while still living with his wife in New York City. The long-running affair didn’t come to light until after his death in 1997, when Shannon sued to get the retreat he’d promised her.

M

● French President Mitterand had a daughter with his mistress, Anne Pingeot. Mazarine Pingeot was a secret until she was about 20, when a tabloid got wind of her existence and raised outrage over the fact that mother and daughter were sometimes housed at the expense of the government.

Getting Involved

Free to follow, request to collaborate

To join the project use the request link under "actions" at the top right of the page.

Visit

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Working with Projects

Wicked Wiki

Geni Wikitext, Unicode and images which gives a great deal of assistance.

See the discussion Project Help: How to add Text to a Project - Starter Kit to get you going!

this project is in History Link