Family tree.

[Userno46376367377367373]

hi, have a couples of questions on two different things regarding family history.

1. is it just my tree or were double barrelled names really common in the 1700 and 1800s? Many of my ancestors appear to have both their fathers and mothers family name but at another date they just have one of the names which has made searching a lots more difficult especially when the typical family has multiple Mary’s and Elizabeth’s etc.
2. this one is about finding an ancestor which seems impossible. It is the father of my grandmothers grandmother so my 2 x great grandmother. My grandmother is still alive and remembers her grandmother however she doesn’t know much if anything about the family history, only that she as an only child. With my research it took me a long time to find her mother, basically it seems 2 x great grandmother was born out of wedlock, took her mothers name and lived with grandparents whilst her mother worked and lived elsewhere. Her father is a total mystery, I am wondering if there could be German links as I have a lot of matches with those with heritage from Germany whereas most of my ancestors I have on my tree are British. My 2x great grandmother was an only child as I don’t believe her mother went onto have anymore children, she also only had one child herself with her husband - my greatgrandmother so I assume the possibility of finding who 2x great grandmothers father is very slim? She also had a very common surname from her mother which has made researching her mothers side more difficult. I am not going to find out am I? I would have loved to find out for my gran if her unknown birth grandfather had anymore children or where he was from.

is it just my tree or were double barrelled names really common in the 1700 and 1800s?

If the parents were unmarried, it was quite common for the father's name to be given as a middle name at baptism - and with one family (not my ancestors) I found they switched from one name to the other throughout their lives - different surnames in different censuses for example. I spotted it because one of the two sons had an unusual Christian name.

When was 2xgt-grandmother born? I would have said try parish/poor law records, but I should think it was probably too recent for that.

If you have access to the local newspapers on Find My Past, try doing a search for "affiliation order" and the relevant place or county and year. That was an order to the father to pay maintenance, and was dealt with by the magistrates, so was public knowledge. (This is assuming England.)

Thank you. Interesting about the names!

my 2 x great grandmother was born around 1880 ish, her motherly wasn’t overly young when she had her as sometimes expected when a child is born out of wedlock and I believe she was in her thirties.. It took me a long time to find her mother. I eventually found her mother through find my past with a baptism record with the name listed. I could not find any birth record at all for her and she was never recorded as living with her mother, just her grandparents, her mother appeared to marry later in life for the times airing age 50 so I can only assume she had no other children that I’ve found, but I also can’t find a death record for her mother under both her maiden or married name, it’s one of the most challenging parts of my tree so far. I will look into what you have suggested, thank you! Yes, I’m in England! Sorry if the above is a rambling mess!

Another route for looking for birth and death records is the General Register Office.

You can search for the details for free. You only need to pay if you want to see the actual certificate.

The link is

https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/login.asp

You need to first register for free and then choose the option "Search the GRO Indexes" if you are looking for a birth or death.

https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/indexes_search.asp

You then put in whatever details you know and you can search all the birth and death details.

I often find that very useful if I can't find a particular record on Ancestry or Find My Past.
.

"Her father is a total mystery, I am wondering if there could be German links as I have a lot of matches with those with heritage from Germany whereas most of my ancestors I have on my tree are British."

It's certainly possible. There were definitely a number of Germans in, for example, Manchester in the 1880s.

Have you uploaded your DNA to MyHeritage? You can do that for free. I found a lot more German connections there than I did on Ancestry.

I would say that it was very unusual for people to have double-barrelled surnames in England in the 1700s and 1800s.

However, beware: in the case of married women, Americans include the woman's maiden name before her married surname, e.g. Margaret Thatcher's full name was Margaret Hilda Thatcher so far as English documents are concerned, whereas an American would call her Margaret Roberts Thatcher.

So if you've found a double-barrelled surname for an English person in English birth, marriage, death or census documents it'll be correct, but if you've found it in an American researcher's online family tree it probably isn't.

It was quite common to give a mother's maiden name as a middle name at baptism, though. Can be a big help in linking up generations or extended family when a lot of people pop up with the same middle name which has been handed down to children and grandchildren and even great grandchildren.

"It was quite common to give a mother's maiden name as a middle name at baptism, though."

Was it? (Just speaking about England here). That certainly hasn't been my experience.