Unconfigured Ad Widget

Collapse

Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Find My Past Blog - Ask the expert – two couples with the same names

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Find My Past Blog - Ask the expert – two couples with the same names

    Our resident expert Stephen Rigden, pictured below, answers your queries.
    From Robert Marshall:
    ‘I have a problem in my family research: there are two couples with the same names, living in the same parish, who had children in overlapping periods of time. I have not been able to distinguish which child is the offspring of which couple.
    The couples are:
    • James and Elizabeth (Hyatt) Hogben, married 12 February 1776 in Whitstable, Kent
    • James and Elizabeth (Fox) Hogben, married 5 November 1787 in Whitstable Kent

    I have not found any record of Elizabeth (Hyatt) Hogben’s death to suspect that James might have re-married.
    In the Whitstable parish records, I have found the following Hogben baptisms, with the parents being identified as James and Elizabeth, but no indication of the mother’s maiden name:
    • James: 17 May 1778
    • Jane: 24 June 1781
    • William: 26 December 1784
    • Moses: 11 January 1789
    • Matthew: 30 May 1790
    • Henry: 28 October 1792
    • John: 30 November 1794
    • Job: 2 October 1796
    • Job: 7 July 1799
    • Job: 18 October 1801
    • James: 12 December 1802

    It would seem obvious that the first three are children of James and Elizabeth (Hyatt) Hogben but after the marriage of the second couple…?
    I have found many instances that the family name flip-flops between records – Hogben and Hogbin – but no specific pattern that gave me any clues. Any help or hints that you could provide would be sincerely appreciated.’
    Stephen says:
    ‘My ancestors come from Whitstable too and I can empathise with your problem, Robert. I have come across this scenario so many times in my own family: two (or more) married couples with the same forename and surname, having children at the same time. Unfortunately, one of the limitations of a typical parish register of this era (unlike the contemporaneous and much more detailed ‘Dade’-style parish registers) is that they so often give insufficient diagnostic information about individuals.

    It is very rare to find a maiden surname against a mother in the baptism register and it is not uncommon to find no marital status in marriage registers. This means that you have to proceed cautiously, reconstructing families through a careful process of examination and elimination. Sometimes it is simply not possible to make a certain identification and, if you want to proceed at all, you have to do it on the basis of probability. I have a number of ancestral lines which are in abeyance, for precisely this reason – there is nothing in the documentary record with which to establish certainty.
    I would suggest that you consider records for adjacent parishes. The historic parish boundary between Seasalter parish and Whitstable parish, for example, runs up what is today Whitstable High Street. In the late 18th century and especially in the early- mid-19th century, it was common for local families, especially those involved in oyster dredging and fishing, to baptise some of their children in one parish, and some in the other. Perhaps this is less likely to be true of the Hogbens, who (if my memory serves me well) were generally agricultural labourers rather than dredgers and mariners. The name Hogben is also found in several nearby parishes, such as Blean and Faversham, and you may want to keep this in the back of your mind too.
    Hogben and Hogbin are one and the same name and you should treat them as such. Spelling of surnames was not settled at that date and it is not unusual to find different spellings within a single document.
    Looking at the sequencing of baptisms, all the children could belong to the same parents. Where you have two married couples of the same name in the same parish, it is rare for their children to be so spaced so as not to overlap – usually, you would see at least two births/baptisms so close together that you know two couples must be involved. As I say, that is not the case here. Moreover, names are unique except for Job – which looks very much like a series of attempts to have a son of that name, the first two of whom died in infancy – and James, the name of the first- and last-born. Again, it is not impossible for the first-born James to have died and his father to want to replace him so as to have a son to carry on his name.
    On balance, I’d be inclined to think that all these children are issue of the same James Hogben and that the first Elizabeth died between 1784 and 1787, even though you’ve found no trace of a death/burial thus far (something I have experienced on my own family tree). I did take a look at the two marriage entries in the Whitstable registers and, in my view, the signatures could well be by the same man – he spells his name Hogbin in both cases (even though the clerk writes the ‘correct’ spelling Hogben) and he has quite a heavy hand. The signatures aren’t identical, but 11 years have passed between 1776 and 1787 and I think they are sufficiently similar to belong to the same man.
    Unfortunately, I’m not sure that you will be able to get a definitive answer. You may, however, want to take a look at the local family history website which used to have very active message boards. If you can find another descendant of the Hogbens of Whitstable, you may be able to work out the exact family structure.
    Good luck!’
    If you’d like to send your question to Stephen, please register or opt to receive newsletters in ‘my account’. Stephen only has time to answer a couple of queries each month but if yours wasn’t answered this month, you could be lucky next time!


    More...


    Please note: This post has originated from a news feed from an external website.
    Family Tree Forum neither endorses nor is responsible for the views of the author or any other content.
Working...
X