A funny little search story

ColinM0288

I have asked many questions here, always with great answers and insights.

I wanted to share a little story about one unusual search.

I was looking for a relative. Every place I looked had lots of info about the husband but little info about the wife. I could not find her maden name. I looked here. I looked on Ancestry, I looked on Findmypast. I looked in various family tree's all which had the husbands full name and details but only the first name of the wife, and no familys associated with it. Strange. My brain thought and thought why is this, did she leave her husband, die, move. Still there would be a record of some type I thought.

Finally, eureka I found a marrage certificate. I carfully examined the the husbands name and it matched, then I looked at his parents names and they matched, and then I saw it the exact reason why no one could figure out her last name. It was as clear as the document I was looking at. Her last name was the same as her married name. Taylor Nee Taylor. People where confused as I was. Like me they could not tell one record from another becasue they all had the last name of Taylor. Births / Baptisms etc.

Now this was not unusual to me. As I have a relative who's maiden name was Smith and then she married a Smith.

So just a funny little story but glad that I could figure it out.

Regards

PS I suppose if you do this you dont have to change your stationary.

Rhonda Budvarson

So fun. Thank you for sharing 😍

Paul W

@ColinM0288

The "serious" side of your discovery is that we should be ready to assume that - when, for example, we see a woman's maiden name as the same as her child's in the GRO birth index - many individuals did marry their cousins. Alternatively, especially with a more common name - like Smith - it could be just coincidence that two persons with the same surname happened to marry one another. Occasionally, the GRO index will have a matching surname and that will involve illegitimacy, but - as you have probably found - illegitimate children are usually found (on the GRO website) in their mother's name, with a blank (dash) entry in the maiden name column.

In one of my ancestral branches, there were a number of cousins (although not necessarily first cousins) who married (in the mid-1800s). At first, I thought it was an error when I found GRO entries showing the child's name as, say, Thomas Lathan Lathan - with the mother's maiden name as LATHAN, too. However, there are multiple instances in this branch where the (same as surname) middle name was given to the child - to represent the mother's side of the "wider" Lathan family!

In summary, we usually have to check-out original documents to clarify the true situation in cases like this - as you found yourself upon obtaining that marriage certificate.

(As an "aside", I have an interest in rock music and there are two relating examples to be found with musicians. Firstly, the singer Patti Smith married an (unrelated) Fred Smith. Secondly, another vocalist/guitarist goes by the name of Courtney Taylor-Taylor!)

ColinM0288

Thanks for your thoughts. Yes I have seen many of my relatives who have their second name as their mothers maiden name. Sometimes its helpfull, as it identifiesthem as the persons family your looking for sometimes its confusing. As an aside, My family started out as Jones and ended up Smith. Uggg. Could we be more common.

😊