Old legal and record term 1600s-1800s
What does natural child mean in an old will?
In a will, a natural child is a child of the testator's body; standing alone, the phrase usually flags a child born outside marriage. Read the contrast: my natural son beside my lawful sons is deliberate wording, and it may be the only paternity statement that child ever got. You will meet it in wills and parish registers, mostly 1600s-1800s.
Where it appears: wills, parish registers.
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Related terms
Browse the full genealogy records glossary for more occupations, causes of death, and legal terms.
FAQs
Where will I see natural child in the records?+
Mostly in wills and parish registers, 1600s-1800s. Clerks abbreviated freely and spelling wandered, so expect variant wordings around it.
Do these old terms still matter for family history?+
Yes, a single word can settle a relationship. Relict names a widow, et ux hides an unnamed wife, natural son points at a parent. The words are dry, but what they encode about a family is not.
Where do these definitions come from?+
They are drawn from period dictionaries, government archive glossaries, and standard genealogy references, cross-checked against each other; provenance is documented with the dataset. Inside AncestorIQ, Deep Research reads the record itself and explains terms like this in context, against your ancestor's own document.
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