The most likely candidate for his father was Vincent Anthony Gayhart, who would have been 20 in 1926. I don’t know whether Harold knew his biological father, but I discovered by searching the Canadian census of 1921 that there was one Gayhart family in Hamilton at that time. Harold was a year older than his mother’s cousin, my grandmother Delia, but unlike Delia, he was raised by his mother. 1911), only died in 1997 - 131 years after Sidney’s birth.Īnother illegitimate child in my family tree, Harold Gayhart Bateman, was born in Hamilton, Ontario in 1926. However, the middle name ‘Skinner’ was officially registered with the births for three of his four sons, William, Harold and John, the youngest of whom, John Skinner Maultby (b. With illegitimacy, the line between middle and last names isn’t always clearcut, and the baptism of one of his daughters gave the surname as ‘Skinner Maultby’. Nevertheless, Sidney held on to the name Skinner. However, while Harry and Herbert were raised by both of their parents along with several younger legitimate siblings, Hannah and George never took responsibility for their first child, Sidney Skinner Maultby. It seems that the format of the three illegitimate boys’ names moved increasingly towards the appearance of legitimacy, even without a legal marriage in place. 1868) and the second Herbert Oxenham Skinner (b. Hannah had two more sons with George Skinner before marrying him. The case of Maultby vs Skinner, a case of ‘seduction’, was heard at the Court of Common Pleas 2, and is a story I plan to tell in a future blog post. Hannah, only 18 years old, soon abandoned baby Sidney, leaving him to be raised by her recently widowed mother, and ran away with George SKINNER, the next door neighbour. Hannah Maultby, a sister of my 3x great grandfather, had an illegitimate son, Sidney Skinner Maultby, in 1868. In some cases, the middle name of an illegitimate child may be the only clue, other than DNA, to the father’s identity. One of the most common reasons for a child to be given a surname as a middle name was when the parents weren’t married. If a child had the same surname as his/her mother, and a middle name that looked like a surname, there’s a very good chance that the child’s middle name was the biological father’s surname. Perhaps they will inspire you to think about where some of your ancestors’ middle names came from too! 1. And I’ve shared some examples of each from my family tree. According to the National Institute of Genealogy, ‘Middle names were chosen for a reason, not just on a whim, and this is important to bear in mind when elucidating relationships.’ 1ĭrawing from my own family history, which is almost entirely in England, I’ve come up with five reasons for parents choosing surnames as middle names. Naming traditions vary from country to country, but in England, having one or more middle names became increasingly common from the 19th century. It got me thinking about why these names were used, and how they were sometimes passed down multiple generations. However, I have a wealth of ancestors who had surnames as middle names. I only have one example of that in my family tree (a Hull butcher who probably endured a lifetime of teasing for his name: Flower Callis - after his grandmother Sarah Ann FLOWER). In Grinling Gibbons’ case, surnames were used as first names. Grinling also named a son Grinling, but his namesake didn’t survive childhood. He also had a brother, Dingley Gibbons (chuckle) who was named after his grandmother’s family line. In fact, he was named Grinling after his mother, Elizabeth Grinling (though his mother’s family name was recorded as Grinling, Gorling, Grilling, and other variations). I was already familiar with Gibbons’ incredible work but didn’t know where his unusual name came from. For several months this year I worked with the Grinling Gibbons Society on the tercentenary of illustrious 17th century carver Grinling Gibbons.
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