Genealogy Chat

See below

What a conundrum I’ve encountered with one branch of my family tree – another one of those examples of not taking things at face value. My grandmother’s family name was Barnard and her father’s birth certificate confirmed the Barnard name. However a likely marriage on freeBMD gave the name as Barnard-Page. Particularly given that I’ve encountered many mis-transcriptions of Barnard, searching now became tricky – am I looking for Barnard, or Page, or Barnet etc etc. Searches revealed that, being simple country folk, this family had difficulty sustaining a consistent awareness of their name – in 1901 they’re listed as Page (but to be fair the original image reveals that there was only room for B Page); 1891 they’re listed as Barnard; and on 1881 they are back to Page, but with some of them having Barnard as a middle name. I’ve now found that a couple of generations back, James Page married Ann Barnard and, rather than taking the name Page, it looks as though they hyphenated. The vagaries of memory and transcription have meant this surname has swapped back and forth through the generations. Eventually, either accidentally or on purpose, the family dropped the Page and, unusually, ended up with the Female-side surname. As an added intrigue, my mother can vaguely remember a Page family living in the same village as the ‘Barnards’, who they never spoke to in that typical village way – referring to them as ‘those damn Pages’. I’m thinking that more than likely these Pages were actually fairly close relations, and for some reason had dropped the Barnard rather than the Page. I think this is what’s enjoyable (albeit frustrating) about genealogy – how something seemingly simple can take a problematic turn. Simon

Intriguing story. There are so many daughters in my family I have kept my maiden name going by hyphernating it with my husband's name, for our daughter. I don't see why the female line should not be given a chance of being perpetuated in name.