Postby john4d » Sat Jan 19, 2019 8:27 pm
Well this thread has brought back memories. Firstly the main theme, of naming children after grandparents. This used to be the practice in England.
Some years ago, whilst researching my wife's ancestors in Cumbria, we discovered a series of William, John, William, John relationships. We were okay until we got to 1790 when William had a son who he christened John. The book the baptism was written in simply said "John, son of William Gradwell". There was no mention of the mother's name at all, and as there were several William Gradwell's in the location all married to different named women, we had no idea who John Gradwell's mother was and therefore no idea which William Gradwell was involved. That brought us to the end of that line of enquiry.
On the question of the mother's maiden name being incorporated as a middle name for a child we also had a problem with Elizabeth Calvert Irving, daughter of Richard Irving. We assumed that Calvert was the mothers maiden name which caused some problems. We later discovered that Elizabeth Calvert was Richard "adopted" mother. I put "adopted" because in the 1850s there was no such thing as adoption, this only became legal in 1926. A mother and daughter both called Elizabeth Calvert adopted young Richard, he having been born in the workhouse.
These days of course, with the Internet, such issues are quickly resolved, but then working from prime documents it took a great deal longer. In the case of John Gradwell baptised in 1790 the archivist had given me what was little more than an exercise book. When I opened it I thought she had given me the wrong book because all the entries were burials. It was only when I "turned the book upside down and back to front" that I found that from that side they were all baptisms. The two sets of entries never did meet, I suspect that the 1837 civil registration act overtook them.
There's no such thing as a bad taste joke