Unconfigured Ad Widget

Collapse

Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Using a stepfather's name to get married

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

  • Using a stepfather's name to get married

    Hi

    Does anyone know why a woman who was over 21 when her mother remarried would use her stepfather's surname on her marriage certificate when she herself married, not long after her mother's remarriage? Especially as before that she'd used her biological father's surname since she was born?

    I'm not sure if I'm looking at two instances of it in my family research. One from the 1870's and one much more recently. The first instance was when a mother was widowed and the second after divorce.

    All suggestions gratefully accepted

  • #2
    Difficult to guess. I often think though that we don't really know how people were known. Often the only evidence of a name we have is from censuses but it may be that in everyday life people were known by names other than the one they used on "official" occasions.
    Judith passed away in October 2018

    Comment


    • #3
      Perhaps her stepfather was a truly wonderful man who paid for her wedding and bought the couple a house, lol. Perhaps she really liked and respected him and thought of him as her father. Or, as Judith says, perhaps she was known locally by his surname and didn't want the possible embarrassment of explaining to all and sundry that he wasn't her natural father.

      Who knows! Surnames are not important.

      OC

      Comment


      • #4
        That's true. I'm simply curious I suppose because there's a sudden change of name on one document from the next and then back again in one case. One of those mysteries that makes family research so intriguing. ;)

        Comment


        • #5
          No, surnames aren't important at all in the scheme of things. Though the changes make research a bit more problematic than it would otherwise be. Maybe that's why they did it - thinking of future generations combing through the archives. :o

          Comment


          • #6
            I have one family on an early census, all listed under the mother's maiden name, including her husband. The couple were married, absolutely no doubt about that and all the children were born within the marriage, so why were they using HER maiden name?

            Answer - I don't think they were. The family was living in what had been her parents' house and indeed it was listed on the census as "Brown's house" (or whatever). I think the enumerator knew the family from way back, knew the daughter and wrongly entered her family name rather than her married name. Simple admin error!

            OC

            Comment


            • #7
              Yes, spot on. I've had a few of those, a sister-in-law who was listed under a brother-in-law's surname. Also one man who got together with a widow and her three daughters and had seven more children with her and all of the children had the dead husband's surname, including the second partner. They were never married which makes me think he already had a legal wife somewhere but I've never managed to track her down. Probably she had a second partner too and was living under his name!

              My favourite is another couple in my not-so-distant family who were living together on the 1911 census and she's listed as a Brown. I thought straight away it was a pseudonym because they were together and not married. On the 1901 census he was a lodger and she was listed as the wife of the head of the household, though I couldn't find a marriage for her and the household head. I just thought it hadn't been registered. Until much later on I found that her first and in fact only legal husband was indeed an Edwin Brown - they were together on the 1891 census. Though it only became clear when I found her third partner's 1917 probate online and saw he had appointed the wife of Edwin Brown as his executor. The tangled web of names!

              Comment


              • #8
                i have a few instances of name changes-they only serve to screw you up i think. there would be many reasons to use a separate name, or a step parents name.

                i have an ancestor who signed up for the army in the 1850s, he ran away from home and lied about his age. his mother marched down to the baracks and asked the commander for her son 'poole'. he took her to him, and she dragged him back home haha. soon after he ran away from home again, and signed up using his step father's name 'ford'. she went marching down there and asked for mr 'poole' again. she was told there wasn't anyone by that name. and she went home. census shows them to geographically quite separated all their lives after this. the family name was 'ford' from 1857 onwards. i do wonder if he ever saw or spoke to his mum after that.

                the other instance would have never been solved if others didn't already know about it. my ancestor was 'twyford' in australia. could never track a birth, and his parents seemed to be made up. 'william twyford and elizabeth sophia twyford nee bell' recorded on the death certificate. well turns out his middle name was twyford, and surname smith. he did something heinous in england in 1841 (letters survive him apologising but not saying what he did), and was shipped to australia. he dropped the name 'smith' and used his middle name. we still have no idea where they pulled mother's maiden 'bell' from, as hers was twyford haha.

                see, just do it to make your life difficult lol
                Last edited by kylejustin; 06-09-13, 03:37.

                Comment


                • #9
                  They do! Names are one of the most fascinating parts of family research - and one of the most frustrating sometimes. My late cousin went to the UK quite a few years ago, pre-internet, and spent several weeks trawling through parish records and came home with masses of research. He did a sterling job based on what we knew at the time. It's only now with the census records online that we realise where some of the names fit in and we never would have figured out one except that a census taker in 1871 crossed out the name Sarah and wrote in the name Leah instead. The lady in question was indeed christened Sarah but known as Leah for some reason all her life. We wonder if it had some reference to the Biblical story of Leah and Ruth. In any case, his long-ago mistake was just the piece of the jigsaw puzzle we needed to make lots of other pieces fit.

                  I have an image of our ancestors sitting beside the fire on winter nights laughing at how they're all going to muddle up their names to absolutely baffle their poor descendants. :o

                  Comment

                  Working...
                  X