Genealogy Chat

Gt grandfather John Darby on the 1871,81,91 census . Registered all his children as Darby.

Before 1871 he was called Burden..
Found his marriage in 1861 as Darbey Burden.
Got his marriage cert and that of his fathers second marriage. On his fathers second marriage cert he names his father as John Darby.

I have copy of John Darbeys will and William Burden is the executor. William is left 3 properties.
John Darby had 2 children with Catherine Burden .

My grandmother married her first husband as Darby Burden. I didnt find this marriage until I had worked out the Darby Burden connection

I've got one family called Lervasha plus variants like Levasher and they are alias Vickery.
Probably an illegitimate ancestor somewhere but records no longer survive to prove it.

Also got a family called Clinton and a female Fiennes married into it. Family was then called Clinton-Fiennes or Clinton or Fiennes-Clinton or Fynes-Clinton etc etc.

Descendants were called mixtures of all sorts. The posh branches stayed as Clinton or Fiennes (one lot ended up as Twiselton but reverted to Fiennes when they inherited some lands and that's where the explorer and actors called Fiennes came from).

My lot ended up called Fines and as ag labs!

Sue
x

I also had a similar thing as Linda.
I have a Bokenham/Bucknam, which then became Beecroft/Beechcroft, then Buckinham.
Bokenham/Bucknam/Buckingham was his fathers name, Beecroft/Beechcroft was his mother's name.
He married at least 4 times and didn't use the same name or spelling once - he even used both as a double-barrell!!
Spellings probably changed because no-one could write, and I expect he had a strong Suffolk accent!!
Fortunately he lived in the same village all his life so could be traced.

maggie

I had a similar thing and it turned out mother was unmarried for the first child and it had to be registered in her M.N. the second child we believe she wanted to have the same surname so used her M.N hyphen Married name. It resulted in some using her maiden name some her married name and some both names.

anyone else have any theories?

Me too. A few generations back we were Hoppe. Then one of the sons started using Happe and the family name was split into two.

Not sure why this was, although probably back then, they couldn't write, so maybe it was a registry error.

Glad its not just me.
To make matters worse my great grandfather then appears to have taken on his common law wife's first husbands surname., Woodgate.

There must be some reason why they started with two surnames. Maybe a woman's maiden name?

I have one family that uses Grosset (combinations of this) and Fraser. Why I have never been able to find out.

Elaine

Has anyone else ever come across this. I have my mums paternal line using the names Wood and Dine for at least 200 years!!
It became Wood-Dine and Woodine for a while in the 1800's.
They finally settled on Dine in the 1900's.
Has anyone else had members of their own family do this and anyone know reasons why???