A Surname Mystery

So why is finding Hannah proving so tricky?

Well, let's start at the beginning, before I knew Hannah existed. Long ago, I was in the process of looking for my great grandfather, William. William was a Brummie who moved to Derby and made a living as a fruiterer. I knew some basic details about him when I started looking, so finding him should have been relatively straightforward. Whenever he cropped up in the records though, I noticed something a little odd. Here are some extracts. Notice anything unusual about his name?

1874 - his birth record:

1886 -his baptism: This record incorrectly states his mother's maiden name was Jenders. It was actually Goode.

1932 - his marriage:

1943 - his death record:

In census records, William's surname is recorded as Wheelock (1881), Genders (1891), Waylock (1901), and Walock (1911, 1921).

So there is something a little unusual going on here. My great grandfather freely used either Walock or Genders as a surname. I asked relatives why the two names but nobody knew.

I'm going to be blunt. Surnames in my family are a nightmare. I naively assumed that William's children would have had the same surname as their dad. This was wrong on account of the fact that their parents didn't bother marrying until they were in their late fifties, long after their children had grown up. The children therefore took the mother's surname, which was her first married name, so not even her own. The children therefore all bore the name of a man that none of them were even related to.

So my first mystery presented itself. Why the two surnames? The answer to that question will be revealed in the next post, where we will met William's father, John.

Comments

Madman?

In my recent searches for William I happened upon the following newspaper article: Birmingham Daily Post, 21st May 1874 In 1874 William was hawking newspapers with his wife Ann, with whom he was living in the Gullet, Stafford Street. Nevertheless he is clearly still haunting his old home turf on Weaman Street as we learn he still frequents the Leopard Inn . Clearly he was aggressive towards the landlord, Mr Lummis, and, for whatever reason, wanted to break his mirror. We learn that Mr Lummis was frightened of William, and that William had made some serious threats to the man while wielding a carving knife. The word “madman” is used to describe William repeatedly in this article, even by William himself. He even demonstrates this by imitating a cuckoo. This piqued my interest as it reminded me of another of William’s arrests, way back in 1849, when funnily enough, he assaulted the landlord of the Old Still on Weaman Street, threatening to kill him and also damaging his proper...

Hannah Morris

Lately this blog has been focusing on William Wheelock and his world. In a total absence of clues to the identity of Hannah Genders, William seems a natural focus given he is the only person besides her son that knew Hannah personally (though I have no confirmation that John had any contact with her beyond infancy). As long as my searches for Hannah turn up nothing, I can at least explore the streets she walked on and learn about the man she had two children with. Until I find confirmation of when Hannah died, I will assume she was alive for roughly the same timespan as William. I will also assume that for some reason or other–marriage or simply hiding from William–she was using a different name. I haven’t stopped searching for the name Genders and its variants, but I’ve turned up nothing so far. There are other possibilities of course. What if she was in the workhouse? What if she was a patient, like William, in some institution or another? Her presence may have been record...

Hannah Genders

And so finally, we get to Hannah Genders, my 3x great grandmother. It would be hard for me to know less about Hannah. She has proven so elusive it has been much easier to prove who she wasn't rather than who she was. I only have two records that I know for sure relate to to my Hannah and they are the birth records of her children, Mary Hannah, and John. Mary Hannah Whilock birth (1846) So from this record I know that on the 8th April 1846, Hannah gave birth to her daughter at 22 Court, 8 House, Lionel Street. I know she was still there on the 9th May that year because that is when she registered the birth, and I know that she can't sign her name. The surname Wheelock is transcribed as Whilock, and she makes the claim that she is William's wife. Mary Hannah Wheelock Death 1848 When Mary sadly died in 1848, she did so at her grandparents' home, Court 22, House 2, Weaman Street. Now although it states that Hannah Wheelock was present at the death, this almost certainly...

Who Was Hannah Genders?

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