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Can you help with my Dobbs/Norwood naming confusion?

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  • Can you help with my Dobbs/Norwood naming confusion?

    This is a bit long-winded, so please bear with me...


    Family lore has it that the parents of my paternal grandmother Betsy Norwood were William Norwood and Elizabeth Dobbs. Elizabeth was his second wife. No records for any of them had been located so I though it was time to do some more research.


    Betsy Norwood was born and lived in Elsham, Lincs (in the Glanford Brigg registration district). In looking at the Elsham PRs available online I soon found a number of records for two sets of Dobbs children: Martha (1832), George (1838), Jane (1841) and Elizabeth (1846) born to John and Sarah, and Mary (1861), Alfred (1863) and John (1865) born to William and Mary.


    I believe that William is actually the first child of John and Sarah, hence his children are the next generation. William was born in 1830 (derived from his age in the 1891 census), and other information strongly suggests this connection even though there is no PR for him.


    For John and Sarah, all the children have the parent name Dobbs in the PRs, except for Jane where the parent name is "Norwood(Dobbs)". All are registered in the GRO (except Martha who pre-dates the GRO) as Norwood, Dobbs is not mentioned.


    For William and Mary, Alfred and John have the parent name Dobbs in the PRs, but Jane has "Norwood alias Dobbs". All of them are registered in the GRO as Norwood, Dobbs is not mentioned.


    Mary died in 1868, and William "married" his second "wife" Elizabeth and had more children: Alma (1885), Betsy (1887), Mary (1889) and William (1894) (confirmed by the 1891 census and GRO records). The PRs for this period are not available online so I can't check them, but the GRO birth records are all for Norwood, except for Betsy, my grandmother, who I eventually found registered as Betsy Norwood Dobbs. Success!


    I've found no marriage records for John/Sarah, William/Mary or William/Elizabeth.


    So, to go back to the original family lore, Betsy Norwood turns out to be Betsy Norwood Dobbs, and William Norwood was baptised William Dobbs although the birth registered as William Norwood. It seems therefore unlikely that Elizabeth was a Dobbs, but identification is work in progress.


    Can someone explain this Norwood/Dobbs duality and why it stretches across three generations. Is this a story of illegitimacy? Can anyone help me to make sense of this?


    One explanation that occurs to me is that John Dobbs (the first father in the above) was a Norwood descendant, but he (or one of his ancestors) was illegitimate, and the Church knew this and insisted that baptisms be registered in the name of the mother (Dobbs). From then on, even though he thought of himself as a Norwood and called himself Norwood, when it came to baptisms, the Church still used the name Dobbs, or if it felt more consiliatory, some combination of Norwood and Dobbs (as in the two examples - but, maybe significantly, only for females). Hence the Dobbs name would automatically get passed to the next generation. Perhaps the only way for the Dobbs name to get left behind would have been to move parish so the Church would be none the wiser. My grandmother seems to be an anomaly - the only example where, for some unknown reason, the Dobbs name is used in the GRO.


    Is this plausible?


    Your thoughts would be most welcome.

  • #2
    Chippy

    Yes, very plausible. I have something similar on several branches of my tree and in my case, it dates back to the Interregnum. My relatives married under the Commonwealth law and once church law was restored, they refused (for whatever reason) to "remarry" in the church. (The church did not recognise commonwealth marriages). The church never forgave them and I have one family who is Garlick alias Whittaker, for about seven generations!

    But also remember - you can use whatever surname you choose. There is no concept of a legal surname in English law, it is just a convention that we use our father's surname.

    OC

    Comment


    • #3
      Thank you for that. So for most aspects of life, these families would have been Norwoods - it's just the Church that regards then as Dobbs. If the parent weren't married, surely the community would have known. Wouldn't this have been rather scandalous in those days?

      Also can you think of any good reason why Betsy would have been registered in the GRO as a Dobbs when previously the family seemed to work hard to be Norwoods?

      Comment


      • #4
        For clarification - you don't get registered in GRO. You are registered in the local registration office who hold onto the original record - copies are later sent to GRO, and the indexes complied from them ( a process which can introduce errors occasionally).

        Use of two surnames in parish records can often indicate unmarried parents , but it really needs a look at the originals to be certain. Likewise have you obtained certificates for the relevant people ? They should reveal quite a bit from the way they are worded ( which the indexes won't always make clear). What exactly does it say on your grandmothers birth certificate ?
        Last edited by AntonyM; 22-07-15, 16:40.
        Retired professional researcher, and ex- deputy registrar, now based in Worcestershire. Happy to give any help or advice I can ( especially on matters of civil registration) - contact via PM or my website www.chalfontresearch.co.uk
        Follow me on Twittter @ChalfontR

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by AntonyM View Post
          For clarification - you don't get registered in GRO. You are registered in the local registration office who hold onto the original record - copies are later sent to GRO, and the indexes complied from them ( a process which can introduce errors occasionally).

          Use of two surnames in parish records can often indicate unmarried parents , but it really needs a look at the originals to be certain. Likewise have you obtained certificates for the relevant people ? They should reveal quite a bit from the way they are worded ( which the indexes won't always make clear). What exactly does it say on your grandmothers birth certificate ?
          The information I've given does come from seeing the parish records (well, images), so in all cases the parent name is just Dobbs except in the two special cases I mentioned.

          Re. my grandmother's birth certificate: I only unearthed all this information the other day. I've ordered a few certificates (including of course that one) and I'm waiting for them to arrive.

          Comment


          • #6
            As Antony says, a birth is registered locally. What we see on line is the GRO INDEX which isn't necessarily correct or definitive. Until the 20th century, there was no space on a birth certificate for the surname of a child. The only surnames on the certificates were the father's surname and the mother's previous (maiden) name. It is often very difficult for a transcriber to decide which surname is to be used if there is "confusion" on the cert.


            My 3 x GGF was Edward Whittaker. His children were all baptised as Garlick, registered as Whittaker - with some of them having the middle name Garlick! All the children were born inside the marriage so illegitimacy was not a factor, at least not in this generation. The church decided that every generation since the commonwealth marriage was illegitimate in their opinion.

            The church attitude made it quite difficult to further my research backwards until I realised what had happened. I kept thinking I must have the wrong couples because even though they were married to each other, the church kept recording them as "alias".

            OC

            Comment


            • #7
              Just received my grandmother's birth certificate, which gives the name as Betsy Norwood, the father as William Norwood Dobbs and the mother as Elizabeth Jane Dobbs formerly France. This at least lets my grandmother of the hook, so to speak, as she always called herself a Norwood, although if she ever saw this certificate she must have wondered about it.

              I don't understand why the birth certificate gives the name as Betsy Norwood when the GRO index says Betsy Norwood Dobbs. Is this just an error?

              I also thought it odd that William would give his name as Dobbs when the family thought of themselves as Norwood. Then I realised that he pre-dates civil registration, was nowhere officially called Norwood, so perhaps he had to give his "church" name (or thought he did), and the appearance of two names confused the indexer.

              Subsequently I found this entry in the Elsham PRs:

              27 Mar 1807 John, illegitimate of Mary DOBS

              This date is consistent with it being William Dobbs's father.

              So it seems that my original stab at an explanation is probably correct. John himself was illegitimate and it's very likely that the father was a Norwood. Only as far as the church was concerned were he and his offspring Dobbs and in all the civil documents I've seen (apart from the birth cert here) the name Norwood is used.

              One last question: how should I name these people in my family tree? For example, pre-civil registration I should use the baptism name, but post-civil registration I should use the registered name (i.e. the surname on the birth certificate).

              Comment


              • #8
                Haven't read all the thread, but wouldn't Betsy Norwood be the forenames of the child? So, as mother was Dodds, she would have been registered as DODDS, Betsy Norwood.

                Jay
                Janet in Yorkshire



                Genealogists never die - they just swap places in the family tree

                Comment


                • #9
                  There is no surname for any child shown on a birth certificate until fairly recently (1969 I think).
                  To confirm what Janet says above - her given (forenames) names were Betsy Norwood , the surname is always assumed to be that of the father, if shown, so in her case - DOBBS, so that is what she is indexed under, the GRO index is correct.
                  Retired professional researcher, and ex- deputy registrar, now based in Worcestershire. Happy to give any help or advice I can ( especially on matters of civil registration) - contact via PM or my website www.chalfontresearch.co.uk
                  Follow me on Twittter @ChalfontR

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Janet in Yorkshire View Post
                    Haven't read all the thread, but wouldn't Betsy Norwood be the forenames of the child? So, as mother was Dodds, she would have been registered as DODDS, Betsy Norwood.

                    Jay
                    Of course you're right - I must have been having a senior moment! In my defence the whole Norwood/Dobbs confusion is the subject here. All Betsy's siblings are registered as Norwood, not Dobbs, so when I first read the birth cert when it arrived this morning I homed in on "Norwood" and drew the wrong conclusion. Thanks for putting me straight.

                    I'm still somewhat confused as to why Dobbs appears at all. I realise that my previous attempt at an explanation (using his "church" name because he pre-dates civil registration) must be wrong otherwise all Betsy's siblings would also be Dobbs, but they are all registered as Norwood.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      If they are registered as NORWOOD then that is the surname of the father on the registration, or if no father is entered, that of the mother.

                      Have you checked the certificates for each sibling to see exactly how they are worded ? Maybe he is on there as William Dobbs NORWOOD ?
                      Retired professional researcher, and ex- deputy registrar, now based in Worcestershire. Happy to give any help or advice I can ( especially on matters of civil registration) - contact via PM or my website www.chalfontresearch.co.uk
                      Follow me on Twittter @ChalfontR

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Olde Crone Holden View Post
                        But also remember - you can use whatever surname you choose. There is no concept of a legal surname in English law, it is just a convention that we use our father's surname.
                        But how would you do that? Preceding civil registration, the Church was the "law" when it came to surnames, and the Church said you took your father's name (or you were illegitimate and took your mother's). And as a later post pointed out, only relatively recently does the birth certificate include the child's surname explicitly - for most of its existence the civil registration has assumed the same surname as the parent. So how could you make your own choice about the surname of the child?

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          The church was not the law about surnames - if you look at baptisms, just like birth certificates, they generally do not give a surname to the child. They record the names given at baptism and the fact that the child is the son/daughter of.... and we all make an assumption about the surname from that.

                          People change names for all sorts of reasons - you can call yourself anything you like, at any point in your life, as long as it isn't done for a fraudulent purpose. No legal process is strictly required when you decide to change your name - a deed poll document is an option that can make things easier with official bodies, but isn't compulsory.

                          I have seen many examples of illegitimate children using their mother's surname, then adopting the name of a husband their mother may later marry, then also using another name that seems to appear from nowhere (but may be the name of their "reputed" father)..then using their mothers name again.

                          These days, when a child is registered the parents are asked what surname the child will have - but they can choose mum or dad's name, a combination of the two, or something else completely unrelated to either parent's name if they want.
                          Last edited by AntonyM; 27-07-15, 16:39.
                          Retired professional researcher, and ex- deputy registrar, now based in Worcestershire. Happy to give any help or advice I can ( especially on matters of civil registration) - contact via PM or my website www.chalfontresearch.co.uk
                          Follow me on Twittter @ChalfontR

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by AntonyM View Post
                            If they are registered as NORWOOD then that is the surname of the father on the registration, or if no father is entered, that of the mother.

                            Have you checked the certificates for each sibling to see exactly how they are worded ? Maybe he is on there as William Dobbs NORWOOD ?
                            I have the certificate for Betsy's half-sister Mary Ann, where William gives his name as plain NORWOOD. I don't have the ones for the other siblings, and no plans as this can get rather expensive. But it seems somewhat academic even if he did use a middle name of Dobbs - the surname would be NORWOOD and all other evidence suggests a desire to be a Norwood rather than a Dobbs. So it's a mystery to me why Betsy is registered as a Dobbs. Perhaps her mother was an early feminist?

                            Incidentally, the 1891 census lists her as Betsy Norwood.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by AntonyM View Post
                              The church was not the law about surnames - if you look at baptisms, just like birth certificates, they generally do not give a surname to the child. They record the names given at baptism and the fact that the child is the son/daughter of.... and we all make an assumption about the surname from that.

                              People change names for all sorts of reasons - you can call yourself anything you like, at any point in your life, as long as it isn't done for a fraudulent purpose. No legal process is strictly required when you decide to change your name - a deed poll document is an option that can make things easier with official bodies, but isn't compulsory.

                              I have seen many examples of illegitimate children using their mother's surname, then adopting the name of a husband their mother may later marry, then also using another name that seems to appear from nowhere (but may be the name of their "reputed" father)..then using their mothers name again.

                              These days, when a child is registered the parents are asked what surname the child will have - but they can choose mum or dad's name, a combination of the two, or something else completely unrelated to either parent's name if they want.
                              Great information, thanks.

                              So in theory, the Dobbs baptisms could have specified the surname of Norwood for the child if the parents had wanted it. Would the parents have known they could do this, and would they have some resistance from the church officials? After all, the church is an organisation with its own rules and conventions, and this seems to contradict some of them.

                              Likewise I assume that an illegitimate child could have been registered with real father's name if the mother wanted it. Perhaps in most cases the father preferred to remain anonymous!

                              Comment


                              • #16
                                Originally posted by chippy View Post
                                Great information, thanks.

                                So in theory, the Dobbs baptisms could have specified the surname of Norwood for the child if the parents had wanted it. Would the parents have known they could do this, and would they have some resistance from the church officials? After all, the church is an organisation with its own rules and conventions, and this seems to contradict some of them.

                                Likewise I assume that an illegitimate child could have been registered with real father's name if the mother wanted it. Perhaps in most cases the father preferred to remain anonymous!
                                At the time you are researching, no surnames for the child are shown on baptisms or birth records so your questions don't apply.
                                Retired professional researcher, and ex- deputy registrar, now based in Worcestershire. Happy to give any help or advice I can ( especially on matters of civil registration) - contact via PM or my website www.chalfontresearch.co.uk
                                Follow me on Twittter @ChalfontR

                                Comment


                                • #17
                                  As far as the Church of England is concerned, it is the forenames that matter, hence them originally being referred to, in former non-PC times, as Christian names. Family names were surnames the name of the sire, and were used simply to distinguish one Mary Jane from another.
                                  When children are baptised, only forenames are used.
                                  I don't suppose many children learn the C of E catechism now, but I think the first question was "What is your name?" Answer "N or M" signifying name (singular) or more.

                                  Jay
                                  Last edited by Janet in Yorkshire; 27-07-15, 17:33.
                                  Janet in Yorkshire



                                  Genealogists never die - they just swap places in the family tree

                                  Comment


                                  • #18
                                    Illegitimate children can only be registered with their father's name on their birth cert if the father attends registration with the mother OR they swear an affidavit (useful for men posted abroad etc, who cannot physically attend registration. Otherwise, the father's name cannot appear on the birth cert. Of course., some women lied and pretended they were married to the father.

                                    Also - and this was so common I have to think it was at the Registrar's suggestion - the father's name could be included as part of the child's name, so John George Smith Brown would suggest his father's name was George Smith, even though the column for father's name was left blank. The church took a different attitude and would allow the "reputed father" to be named in the margin of the church register SOMETIMES - again, it very much depended on the individual Vicar and his opinion of the mother.

                                    Incidentally - one of the things which drives me mad is when people say that a birth cert says "father unknown". It never says any such thing and I am sure Antony will back me up on that.

                                    OC
                                    Last edited by Olde Crone Holden; 27-07-15, 17:32.

                                    Comment


                                    • #19
                                      Just to repeat a previous question that I guess got overlooked... how should I record these people's surnames in my genealogy program (Gramps)? I'd assume that I should use the registered name in the civil registration era, and baptism name in earlier times. When I originally found my Dobbs ancestors in the parish records I recorded them as such, but now I've located their registrations as Norwood, I guess I should change to that.

                                      Thanks.
                                      Last edited by chippy; 27-07-15, 18:35.

                                      Comment


                                      • #20
                                        Originally posted by Olde Crone Holden View Post
                                        Incidentally - one of the things which drives me mad is when people say that a birth cert says "father unknown". It never says any such thing and I am sure Antony will back me up on that.

                                        OC
                                        You are correct - there should just be a line in the box to indicate no father's details are shown ....(but I'm sure one or two registrars may have ignored the rules in the past - they did on most other things).
                                        Last edited by AntonyM; 27-07-15, 18:36.
                                        Retired professional researcher, and ex- deputy registrar, now based in Worcestershire. Happy to give any help or advice I can ( especially on matters of civil registration) - contact via PM or my website www.chalfontresearch.co.uk
                                        Follow me on Twittter @ChalfontR

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