Douglas Woodall's Ancestry Page > Biological > Joseph Woodall 1881
According to his birth certificate, my grandfather Joseph James Westray Woodall was the son of Robert Woodall and Emma Woodall née Drury, and he was born in their house in Bromley St Leonard, Middlesex, on 5 September 1881. However, I discovered in 2012 from Y-chromosome DNA tests that I am not descended biologically from Robert.
This set me thinking about Joseph's name, which I had previously taken for granted. The story in the family (I discovered, from my second cousin Philippa) is that he was named Westray after his father's employer. I had no idea who that was; but fortunately Westray is a very uncommon name. The only real possibility is Charles Westray, who was living with his wife Kate in Mile End Old Town, less than a mile from Bromley. Robert was a shipwright/carpenter. Charles was mainly a house painter, but he came from a seafaring family and briefly, around 1871, he described himself as a mariner; so it is quite likely that he knew Robert. It is quite possible that Robert did some work for him at some stage, although I doubt whether Charles was Robert's employer in any real sense; I suspect that this was an invention for Joseph's benefit. (Robert could also have worked for Charles's father John Westray, who was a mariner; but he died in 1854, when Robert would have been just 19.)
Charles Westray seems to disappear after the 1881 census. I cannot find any record of his death, but I assume it was before December 1884, when Kate remarried. My theory is that Joseph was the son of Charles and Kate; that at the time he was born it was clear that they could not support another child (perhaps Charles had already died); and that Robert and Emma adopted Joseph at birth and brought him up as their own, even to the extent of registering his birth as though he was their own child.
I have not found any evidence from DNA tests to support this, but that is not surprising, as I now know that I am illegitimate. I still think it is probably what happened, but there is no way of proving it, as Joseph now has no known living descendants.