Names of children not matching
I do have a bit of a dilemma.... I ordered the marriage certificate for Alice Catherine (Lynn) Merton and Charles Samuel Merton from England. It just arrived and everything matches what I would expect... her father is John Henry Lynn and the address is correct. The problem is the name of the groom. It says Samuel Hart.. not Merton.
I went back in to search for the birth of the children and found nothing under Merton so I changed the Surname to Hart and they were all there.
Charles Samuel is Samuel Charles Merton Hart - born July 22, 1877
Fred Harry is Fred Harry Merton Hart - born July 15 1879
And on it goes. All 6 children born in England have the last name of Hart and Merton as the third forename. I am so confused. Is this typical? and how do I figure out where the "Merton" came from and why they dropped "Hart"
Answers
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In my view, this is not typical but equally I have come across this type of situation before. There are a variety of reasons to explain it. My guess is that Merton is a family name from parents, grandparents or more remotely. You say that Hart was dropped in favour of Merton later in life. Do you know when? Have you found the family on census records? The fact that Samuel Hart himself changed his name in adulthood is more unusual. I have seen this where a person had to change his name in order to inherit from a distant family member (a Merton presumably). Another possibility is the desire for Samuel to disassociate himself from the Hart family - perhaps a Hart family member committed a well published crime.
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A little more detail would be most useful. For example, what is the name of his father on the marriage certificate? What was his (approximate) year of birth? Where did you get the surname MERTON from? Have you found the family (as Graham asks) in the 1881 or 1891 census - or his record in 1861 / 1871 returns?
I have found his marriage on the FreeBMD website and births of the children in the GRO online indexes, but I do not have access to census images, so cannot identify the family from Find My Past or FamilySearch census indexes.
In the end, you might still have to speculate about reasons for the change of surname. One relative of mine literally alternated his surname in successive census records - between the name of his mother (he was illegitimate) and that of his stepfather - so illegitimacy is a possible factor here.
Please provide further details if you still want to attempt to solve the story behind this.
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My mother's maiden name was Merton, Her gr-grandparents are Alice Catherine (Lynn) Merton and Charles Samuel Merton. I knew dates from their births. Alice was born in 1853 and her parents were John Henry Lynn and Frances (Schorey) Lynn. On Charles death certificate in New York in 1901 they listed his parents as Charles Merton and Rebecca Merton. His birth year is 1851. The Marriage certificate says they married on March 1, 1876. He was 25 and she was 22. When I tried first to get a marriage certificate, I put in both names (as I thought them to be) and it was not found. I found Alice in the index and provided just her name and that is when I received the certificate in the mail and saw the Samuel Hart.
It looks to me like the father of Samuel is Aron Hart but it is hard to read. (attached)
This is the link to the 1881 census in England - Merton - https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/7572/images/LNDRG11_290_295-0096?pId=14456210
In 1900 in US - https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/7602/images/4114698_01223?pId=49669846
I was never able to find a birth certificate for their children (they had 12 altogether - 6 in England and 6 in US) but when I changed my search to last name Hart and maiden name of mother to Lynn - they all showed.
I transcribed all 6 birth certificates into one document to make it easier - in the 5th child Samuel actually has the Merton name included in his. All the kids have Hart as last name and Merton as their third forename.
As far as the criminal aspect, I believe Alice father - John Henry Lynn - was arrested andbrought before old bailey for theft. He was commercial traveler.
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I'm in London, England, so have been away from my computer all evening and now preparing for bed!
I'll take a look at the details you have provided tomorrow and, hopefully, it will help establish what might have happened here. Looks like there might be an equally interesting story on Alice's side of the family, though. Anyway, I'll come back here sometime tomorrow, but meanwhile, maybe some other member of "Community" might care to look into this, too.
Paul
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I have found out a fair amount of detail on your HART ancestry, but not the one mystery you are trying to solve: why Samuel Hart is still known as such at his 1876 marriage, but is shown as Charles Merton in the 1881 census. There are already two profiles in Family Tree for him: one in the name of Samuel Hart, the other is in the name of Charles S Merton.
I will provide details of what I have found out about the family in a private message I hope to send later today.
Reverting to the name change issue, I can only speculate on why he chose the name MERTON. The family appears to have been Jewish, but MERTON is hardly an anglicised version of HART (not a Jewish name in itself), nor does CHARLES seem to have any connection to SAMUEL. As Graham suggests, maybe there was an issue of criminality involved - although the British Newspaper Archive website only appears to show Charles Merton as a victim of crime. (There is a 29 Sep 1880 report of a box of cigars being stolen from Charles' tobacconist shop in Hackney!) Perhaps he just wanted to dissociate himself from his family (name). There is a suggestion that his father Aaron's shoemaking business went bankrupt, but that hardly seems a cause to completely change ones name.
As I say, I will send further details later (watch for a red circle against the envelope icon at the top of the page), but will leave further actions (merges, etc.) for you to handle.
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