General Chat

Who is this with the family in 1861?

Name: Carmax Stewart
Age: 50
Estimated birth year: abt 1811
Relation: Servant
Where born: West Indies, Cuba

Civil parish: Elswick
Town: Newcastle
County/Island: Northumberland

It does look like "Carmax".

Starting to absorb the facts ... I would say it is entirely possible the children repudiated the father and his surname and took his mother's (if I have that straight). There might even have been an inheritance issue there.

I too wonder whether he was the later children's father. The mother could have had them baptised in his absence and declared them as the father if he was not. I have a strong suspicion that is what happened with mine - four children baptised in a batch, two of whom later changed their surnames. (The other two died in infancy/childhood so the issue didn't arise.) One of them was baptised with the name that became her surname as a middle name (but it is such an unusual one that I have not been able to identify a candidate for true father from it). Anyway I suspect the supposed father wasn't present. In your case, fibbing to (or colluding with) the clergy might have been one thing but making a false registration might have been caught out.

If Turnbull was not around much it's possible the mother had simply partnered with someone else. Turnbull, you said, was back in the UK after disposing of his West Indies interests - but was en route to/from India when he died.


Oh, and btw --

Our hunches re the name change, based on snippets of family legend, are that the family were originally Stewarts, and they supported Bonnie Prince Charlie, and that they changed their surname to Turnbull, a safer 'border' name, to escape Jacobite persecution. It would seem, then that perhaps 100 years later, when the coast was clear, they felt it OK, or necessary, to change back.


Just that also happened in that wondrous familiy of mine, although with a twist. They were Cock in Scotland, weavers and brewers. The shifted to Wales in the late 1700s and became Coke, very prosperous traders and professionals. The one born 1856 who married the name-shifting sister of my name-shifting ancestor then became McCock sometime in the mid 1880s. I have only this past fall found his great-granddaughter through a tree here at GR, and the vague story she heard about the names, without actually knowing what they had been, was about Scottish pride. Actually, he went bankrupt from gambling within a very short time of receiving his large inheritance and was hiding from creditors, as far as I can tell!

1871 census: Louisa Stewart, born 1864, adopted by the widow Annie Willmer (born Alyth Scot. 1832/3)
Annie & Edward Willmer must have been family friends- close ones- as Edward was the informant at the death certificate of Margaret Jessie Stewart, and Annie was born in Alyth
I can find no marriage record for Ed (born Grantham, Lincs or Lancs) and Annie in the 1851-1861 period.


How do you know that Annie and Edward were husband and wife, Edward's birthplace, Annie's birthplace? It just says Perthshire in the 1871.


Okay, 1861

William Clay 36
Edward Willmer 28
Ann Willmer 29
Civil parish: Coxhoe
Town: East Hetton
County/Island: Durham

Name: Edward Willmer
Age: 28
Estimated birth year: abt 1833
Relation: Brother-in-law
Where born: Grantham, Lincolnshire, England
grocer's assistant

Name: Ann Willmer
Age: 29
Estimated birth year:
Relation: Sister-in-law
Where born: Allyth, Scotland

Name: William Clay
Age: 36
Estimated birth year: abt 1825
Relation: Head
Where born: Allington, Lincolnshire, England
grocer


Brother-in-law could mean that Annie was William Clay's brother but since she is sister-in-law it might more likely mean that Edward was William Clay's stepbrother.

Edward in 1841 in Grantham:

Charles Wilmer 41
Emma Wilmer 38
Sophia Wilmer 17
Horatio Wilmer 15
Charles Wilmer 12
John Wilmer 8
Edwd Wilmer 8
Maria Wilmer 5
Fredc Wilmer 3

In 1851 Edward Willmer 1834 is a servant in Ancaster, Lincs.

EDWARD WILMER
Christening: 06 APR 1833 Grantham, Lincoln, England
Father: CHARLES WILMER
Mother: EMMA
Batch No.: C011243

but of course it's Ann the connection would seem more likely to be through.

Did you notice that in 1871, two households above Annie Willmer, is Maria E Wilmer, unmarried housekeeper, born c1841, Grantham, Lincolnshire? The spelling does seem to be Wilmer with one L in most instances. Just to complete that tangent. ;)

Thanks for that- I didn't realise the births registrar had to traipse around, figuring it all out on his own in that 1850-60s period- interesting!

I'm starting to think there was some huge other reason for such a number of people to dinstance themselves from Turnbull, and for the old bloke to die an alcoholic- maybe there was some huge disgrace- or maybe there was something else outside his control entirely...

Wonder what, & how to figure it out other than via one's imagination...

Newcastle newspapers aren't searchable online yet for the 1855-65 period yet, are they?

This is the kind of post that really belongs on the Trying to Find board where the people who would be most likely to get their teeth into it would see it. The General board actually isn't used for genealogy research, despite its title (check the other threads in recent days).

Rather than try to get a handle on what is quite an overwhelming and dense pile of facts just now, I would just say that name changes really were not that uncommon. We run into them all the time in TTF threads. I have one famous one (around here, anyhow!) in my family. It took me quite some time but I tracked my people down under their original name and have learned the reason for the name change, but not for the particular new name, and may never. I only learned the reason because someone still living (who died last year) had known the person born c1850, her grandfather, who made the change, and had told his story to her son, having had no idea herself that her grandfather's surname was totally fake. There may have been no "good" reason for picking that name in particular.

What might be wise is to produce a nutshell version of the facts and issues. Weed out the extraneous and provide a 3-paragraph summary maybe that makes it plain where the issues arise.

Many children were not registered between 1 July 1837 and mid-1875

Birth registration was included in the registration of bmds which started on July 1 1837, but unlike marriages and deaths, the onus was on the REGISTRAR to find out about births occurring in his district, and on him to visit the house and register the birth.

A new law was passed in 1875 which put the onus on the MOTHER (or a representative if she was unable to do so) of the child to go to the registrar and register the birth of a child after mid 1875

I note that Von suggested that only 10% of births were not registered in the period between 1837 and 1875 ....... I beg to differ with her, and believe it was much larger.


Otherwise, the powers-that-be would not have changed the law.


It could be that for some reason, they did not notify the Regiostrar, or the Registrar did not hear about the last 3 births.




sylvia

Thanks Rose,

yes, it is one hell of a mistranscription- to have the father named Robert when every other mention of the father/grandfather shows him as David, and to havethe father's occupation as a banker, when that line of occupation was rather foreign to us.


I just wonder if the registrar when copying things down at the end of the day was a bit dreamy and had his lines slip, and the one before or after went where it should have.

I did find an error in an 1876 marriage, of a similar nature- they wrote the same occupation for the groom & the bride's father- and this was not the case, That's why I felt errors were possible.

Unfortunately most of the family, except a daughter line, and an uncle & aunt line were in India after 1865, so they don't appear on censuses in UK after that..

Is it likely that the original marriage record would still be able to be looked at in Newcastle upon Tyne? (& the ones preceding & following it?)

Thanks!

Ian I haven't read this all through...and not up to speed with Scottish records anyway but what you said here struck me

"the marriage registry of David Turnbvull to Frances Middleton mentions his father's a banker, named Robert White Ridely Turnbull. I am convinced it must have been transcribed wrongly when recorded. "

that's a heck of a mistranscription ?

I did find whilst looking on census for a friends family that on one census the whole family appeared under a different surname, but when some more records where put on Ancetry I found that the 'new surname' was in fact a middle name...it was the middle name of the father's father on marriage cert ... obv the census taker had assumed it was the surname...

OK-, based on thoughts since reading that- maybe their father/grandfather, the shipwright, born 1801, was not the son of his father, and this was only discovered much later in his life....like when the real father died & left some plantations for some descendants to inherit...

and things unravelled after that...

just wondering aloud...

thanks for the ideas!

I ran out of room to finish replying...

What years were checked- I checked + or - 2 years for each person, and further, when the results were zero.

Handwritten names at the bottom of the page- that's another story atcually- how would I find that out? They should still be indexed, though shouldn't they?

Re that kind of thing...the marriage registry of David Turnbvull to Frances Middleton mentions his father's a banker, named Robert White Ridely Turnbull. I am convinced it must have been transcribed wrongly when recorded. I have followed the family through the censuses, and his siblings births, and the father was always another David Turnbull, who was listed as a shipwright, or as a ships carpenter- all except that one wedding registry.

Davcid's daughter, the one born in Cuba, lists on her wedding cert in 1876, his proper name- well David Turnbull Stewart, but he was listed as a wine merchant. The husbane she married was also listed as a wine merchant. I know he traded in something, so he could have been a wine merchant, but Frances' father was definitely not one. I again feel it was a transcription error.

I've often wondered the merit (and cost) of paying for the marriage certificates one before & one after the one we know has the error, to see if a bit of the right material might be on one of the adjacent records.

What does anyone think of that?

Are the originals searchable in Newcastle, still? Is it a free or a pay per lookup search?

I have checked Scottish BMD's also- as their parents were were back & forth between Edinburgh & Newcastle for the varying censuses. David tended to stay based at N.U.T though. Apparently they owned a place at Jesmond. Frances' parents were nearby too- her father was a railway station master- firstly at Walsall in 1848, later at Shinrone, where he died in 1866.

HIs father the shipwright, also called David Turnbull, died alone, of the DTs in 1864 in Jarrow, and wasn't buried in the family plot with his wife, and our David's deceased children.. HIs wife, who was born a Stewart, died in 1860 in Jarrow. I often wonder why he was alone- and why he became an alcoholic- maybe as one of you mentioned, it was worked out that he wasn't really his father. However, all of his other children adopted Stewart (or Stuart) as a second name at about the same time as our David took it as his surname. Maybe too he just turned to alcohol after the death of his wife four years earlier.

I do appreciate the ideas- group brainstorming works wonders. I can't see that he's not the father. The OPR records in Scotland say he is, and his wife wasn't really known for sleeping around (that we know of). She was born Isabella Stewart in 1801. It's interesting that she had children between 1825, and 1848- a long stretch. Maybe that was not unusual, but the youngest daughter was born when she was 47 years old. That's from Scottish OPR's.

I'll have to give thought to unfaithfulness as a motive somewhere, but the Jacobite persecution idea seems to have come down in legends.
I still have not figured out how the family came ito own & sell the plantations in the West Indies, either. David T, the father, & the shipwright, born 1804, was from Dundee (supposedly, but I never found a birth record of him, only of the 'other' DT in Dundee at the same time- there were two of them)

If he fixed ships, he could have travelled- but David the son always apparently owned a ship (till it sank).

Lots of questions...


Thanks for the ideas- I appreciate it.

In the meantime, I'd lfirst ove to know in reality, why those three don't have birth certificates. I've known for about six years that they didn't have them- it was only this week that it dawned on me that the non-certificated children were all born Stewarts, and the certificated ones were botn Turnbulls.

The two oldest boys were enrolled at Ushaw College, Durham, from mid 1863 to mid 1864- just 12 months. I had a transcription of the enrolement- but it just listed them as David Henry Stewart & John William Stewart, and gives their birth dates, which happen to match the birth certificates I have for them surnamed Turnbull in 1849 & 1855.

Thanks again for the ideas- please keep them coming!

Ian

Thanks for the replies.
Quick responses-:

The armed services- no. He (David, the father) was formerly a West Indies planter (sugar plantation owner) but as far as we can make out, he hurriedly sold up whatever he'd inherited, and that wasn't much- by the time he was 26 years old, and was then back in UK.

Missionaries- no.

Laziness- well the first three children were registered.

Differing parents-no- not according to the church records of the baptisms of the second three.

Deaths of parents- we think David drowned off the coast of Bombay when his ship went down, in December 1864. The last daughter was born in June '64, though, when they were all in Newcastle. I never did find any record of his death in India record office searches, nor in the LDS microfilm for all regions of India, between 1860 & 1900 when I tried looking.
Frances the mother was apparently alive in 1880 for her oldest son's wedding in Bombay. Family legend was that she returned to England after her husband drowned in 1864 (he's supposedly buried in the family plot at Old Jesmond Cemetery, with two of his children- there's just no date for him on the weathered headstone- I suspect it could have been a bit later) She revisited India for her son's wedding, and we guess died sometime after 1880- but I found no record of her death in India, or UK- well, Frances Stewart is not a rare name, but so far I've reached a bit of a brick wall with her death. She definitely lived long enough to have done the registrations
.
Money- apparently they had it, till 1860 at least. David was also an inventor, and had patents registered. He'd sold their yacht/ship, and was sailing it to the new owners, somerwhere in UK, and it was hit by a steamship called the Carnarvor, or Caernaefon, and sunk. It was uninsured. It was a big loss for the family. His ship was named Fanny, after his wife. I used to have a news clipping of the accident years ago. It was somewhere near Liverpool, I thought.

David Turnbull's mother's maiden name WAS Stewart, actually, and I've traced that family back two more generations- they were weavers, later millers from Alyth, Perthshire. No significant reason there for the name change- not money, at least, on that side of the family. His mother was the third of four siblings.

Our hunches re the name change, based on snippets of family legend, are that the family were originally Stewarts, and they supported Bonnie Prince Charlie, and that they changed their surname to Turnbull, a safer 'border' name, to escape Jacobite persecution. It would seem, then that perhaps 100 years later, when the coast was clear, they felt it OK, or necessary, to change back. That's another story, actually, and is enhanced a bit by the fact that David T's younger siblings, also born Turnbulls, ((I have their Scottish OPR birth entries) all took Stewart as a second name from the 2nd half of the 1850s onwards, also- evidenced by their names on their marriage certificates, and other certificates we found that they'd witnessed.

There was some compelling reason to adopt the name Stewart, and the only one that makes sense to me is that it was what they were originally. David's younger siblings may have felt they'd rather stay Turnbulls, and add Stewart as a second name, but David, being the oldest, might have felt he 'had to do it properly'. He signed those baptism records as David Turnbull Stewart, ot DT Stewart.
(I have no idea where he got the 'White Ridley' part of his second name which he used when he was married. I could not find any connection with White or Ridley families when I looked. I feel it was a red herring of some sort. Maybe W.R were a childless second cousin/uncle line, and he was told he'd inhgerit the plantations if he changed his name...I have no idea- but that's a separate conondrum again!

Family legend also was that they were Stewarts of Craigiehall, disinherited over a religious argument with his father in the late 1500s. Another story again. Legends are great, but I'm trying to work backwards with concrete proof. Only. It was hard in reverse, when the family vanishes, then reappears under a different surname as you go back in time through the 1850s. It's taken me 30 years to make significant progress after I followed several hunches, and found proof enough that they were all the same family.

The Record Office itself- I'm in Australia, and don't have ready access to Northumberland- and I had an idea that certain data was destroyed in the War/bombing, anyhow. My great grandfather engaged a genealogist in 1932 to do some lookups, and they found the church baptism records- that was all they could find. It cost him a lot.

Could David Turnbull have discovered that his father wasn'[t who he thought he was- I guess that's possible- quite possible- but family legend that I traced via a branch of a sibling of his, matches our story about plantations & drowning & no idea about name changes- that side stayed as Turnbulls.

What years were searched for the births of the 3 Stewart children?
If they were registered late, their names would be handwritten at the bottom of the page - easy to miss!
They could have waited until they were on 'home' territory before registering them. Have you looked in Scottish BMD's?

Ian
I presume you have had a check at the local register office.
Not all information reached the GRO.
Bear in mind that it wasn't until 1875 I think that registration became compulsory although apparently before this only 10% of births weren't registered.
Von

I can't offer any reasonable solution as to why those particular births weren't registered. Only to say maybe they just 'never got round to it' for various reasons, one of which could be that they travelled and/or moved house within the area, and were never settled long enough to sort out their affairs. Or it could be as simple as that the register office was too far to walk from their house at that time!

Or maybe not registering the births was linked with this name change business. If Frances Middleton wasn't the mother of the 3 later children (ie those births not registered), ie she may have died by this time and David Turnbull re-married, either to a woman with the surname Stewart or not.
Or maybe he didn't marry the mother of the 3 later children, Ms Stewart, because Frances Middleton was still living.
Was David Turnbull's mother's maiden name Stewart?
Could David Turrnbull have discovered c1860 that he was not the real son of Mr Turnbull, but of a Mr Stewart, and therefor wished to revert to what he now knew to be his real name?

Sorry, I digresssed to the name change thing when I was trying to stick with the non registraton of the births!!

I have a similar problem in my g.g.grandfather's family....of 8 children only 7 were registered (years spanning 1849-1867), one child born in 1859 was not registered, why not?? The family moved house a fair bit, but only from one street to the next, they always stayed in the same area so there seems no logical rason why they wouldn't have reigstered this one birth!
Even though birth registration was still not compulsory in those years , it still leaves the question 'why some children and not others'?

K

Hi Ian, I have just read through your post. Without doing any research or delving into checking your information, one thought immediately springs to mind.

Army or Navy family? What was the occupation? Have you checked armed services records.? Were their births recorded overseas, on board ship, at British Embassies in other countries, etc etc.

It seems weird they travelled so much unless they were required to. Oh and how about missionaries.

None of that explains the change in names.

I meant to also add that when looking for the birth certificates of the three from the 1860s, I even went as far as first and second name searches, with a wildcard as the surname, and nothing remotely resembling anything interesting came up.

I guess that means they weren't registered...? but why ? & all 3...?

HI Folks,
I've been doing genealogical research for a few decades, so most 'normal' searches are understood, and I like to think myself good at ferreting out hard-to-find aspects, eventually.

However, this is very intriguing. It only dawned on m the other day the overall connection. I'd be interested in opinions on why, or solutions.

My ggg grandfather was born named David Turnbull in Dundee in 1826. I have a copy of the Scottish OPR register for that.
He married in 1848 in Newcastle upon Tyne. We have the certificate.

In 1849, 1851 & 1855, he registered three children's births born in or around Newcastle. The fourth was born in 1854 in Cuba, West Indies. (They did travel a bit back then)

All were Father: David Turnbull, or sometimes listed as David White Ridley Turnbull; and mother Frances, Turnbull, formerly Middleton. Anyhow, I have the birth certificates, except for the Cuban one- (any one know if they're available there...?)

The family went overseas again, to West indies, and to Bombay again over the next five years.

IN 1860 they were back in Newcastle upon Tyne, and had a son Francis Ben Stewart born. In March 1862, a daughter Margaret Jessie Stewart was born. She died a year later and is buried at Jesmond. i have her death certificate, and a photo of the grave.
In June 1864, they had a daughter Louisa Bigger Stewart, born.

Now one fact is that they changed the family surname from Turnbull to Stewart while overseas. In the 1861 census, the whole family is listed, the earlier children, plus Frank- all with Stewart as a surname. In later years the ones born Turnbull, list Stewart as their surname on marriage certificates. I'm not going to quizz why at the moment, but I have some ideas.

What is really odd to me, are the three births in 1860, 62 & 64.
I have the full birth details only from church transcriptions/registries of their baptisms, that my great grandfather got a genealogist to look up in the 1930s.

I cannot find a UK General Record Office record of ANY of those three births at all, in Northumberland, or in the whole of UK.
I have paid for searches with reference checking, when looking at namesakes, and all have come back with "the father is not named David, the mother is not Frances, nor was she formerly Middleton."

I'm wondering why, when they were born there (they lived in Jesmond), and since they were baptised, aged about 1 month of age, why were they not birth registered? All three with the new surname, that is?
They also don't exist as births under Turnbull, the former surname, either, I checked.

The older siblings had their births registered at about 1 month of age, according to their certificates.

Francis Ben, or Frank, went to India, married and died there. He was always surnamed Stewart.
Margaret Jessie died of painful dentition & convulsions aged one, in Newcastle. I have her death cert.
I also know the youngest-Louisa Bigger Stewart- well all I can find of her later was the 1871 census: Louisa Stewart, born 1864, adopted by the widow Annie Willmer (born Alyth Scot. 1832/3) Are there any 'adoption certificates' from those days?
Annie & Edward Willmer must have been family friends- close ones- as Edward was the informant at the death certificate of Margaret Jessie Stewart, and Annie was born in Alyth- where David Turnbull's mother was born in 1801. Edward Willmer died circa 1867/8, hence Annie's a widow in the 1871 census.

I can find no marriage record for Ed (born Grantham, Lincs or Lancs) and Annie in the 1851-1861 period. I've paid for verified searches, and all have returned with the wife not Ann or variations on that name, nor born in Scotland. I'm still trying to find her maiden name as I feel she must be a distant cousin line.(Just a hunch, but that's better than no idea, and has proved successful in opening doors, before)

I've not located a death for Annie Willmer, nor a marriage for Louisa Stewart (or even Lousia Willmer), but perhaps she went overseas to India, also. Neither is in the 1881 census in UK, that I could find.

Anyhow my original query is can anyone offer any clues as to why the three children, born & baptised in the early 1860s, weren't birth registered, (under any surname) when their siblings were 11 to 6 years earlier?

The subject of the surname change is a different one, for another post, but it would not have had anything to do with skipping taxes or anything like that! Several of the older siblings kept Turnbull as a second name, later in life for a bit, or at least on their marriage certificates, after they 'became' Stewarts, so they weren't 'hiding' from authorities, either.

Any weird or thoughtful opinions appreciated. I think I've exhasted all normal possible excuses!

Many thanks!

Ian