Addition of new middle name - Muckridge

[spring1]

I have just received a birth certificate with my g/g/grandfather as father. He and his wife seem to have added a middle name of Muckridge, so they are John and Mary Muckridge Sperring. They are in his birth village of Compton Martin, Somerset in 1867. I can't work out the connection - my early researches on Google lean towards Ireland and I'm just hoping it's not yet another complication

[angieh]

It may be that Muckridge was your ancestor's or his wife's mother's maiden name. This practice seems to have been well established in a branch of my family history. Very helpful it is too, although sometimes the spelling is slightly different. Hope this may be the case in your tree!

[Peter Goodey]

Can you be more explicit please. Are you saying that the parents are shown exactly as follows?:

Father: John Muckridge SPERRING
Mother: Mary Muckridge SPERRING formerly .....

[spring1]

On the child's birth certificate Mother is now Mary Muckridge Sperring and Father John Muckridge Sperring. Mary's maiden name Eyre is shown as formerly...Eyre. They married in 1849 and they don't appear to have registered all their children, but this one is their last(I think) and this is the first one with Muckridge on it. I could understand it if it was Mary's maiden name - common in my husband's family - but otherwise confused. There is only Mary's mark on the certificate, so I have wondered about mis-spelling/hearing. This particular certificate uses the surname Spuring, for example.

[Peter Goodey]

Thanks for the clarification.

My only thought on Muckridge is that it sounds like a variant of Muggeridge.

If this isn't holding you up, I'd put it on the back burner and wait and see what emerges in your future research.

On the other hand if you're stuck, the best I can suggest is to make sure you have as much evidence (BMD certs) as you can get hold of. Use wildcards as necessary in FreeBMD (eg SP*RING). It may also be worth checking parish registers.

I assume there were no clues from the marriage witnesses otherwise you would have mentioned it.

[spring1]

After almost a year this has come back to the fore. I have never managed to find Henry Arthur's(ggrandfather)birth certificate. In an attempt to get ready for WDYTYA I did a review of some of my previous work and searched on freebmd for all Henry Arthurs. To my amazement there was a Henry Arthur Muckridge. The birth was registered by Mary Muckridge, formerly Eyre and date fits. She gave the father's name as John Muckridge. In the 1861 census she is Sperring. I have their marriage certificate of 1849 as John & Mary Sperring. Despite the cost I am tempted to check all the other children as Muckridge and see if there are any more clues.

[Coromandel]

It may be that John Sperring was also known as John Muckridge, and so his whole family was sometimes recorded as one and sometimes the other (and sometimes both!).

One possible explanation might be that John started out life as John Sperring, but his mother then married (or remarried) to a Mr Muckridge, so John sometimes used the stepfather's name. Or it could be the other way around: Muckridge could be the original name, and Sperring the stepfather's. Parish registers for Compton Martin may shed more light on this.

Sometimes these aliases persist for several generations, so it may not be John who was the first to have both names: the Muckridge/Sperring link may be further back.

[spring1]

Thanks for your reply, I've had another little play around tonight and found John Mockeridge in freereg/Compton Martin. This could fit in with your theory as William Mockeridge is the father. On his marriage certificate - as John Sperring - he put William as his father. If William died, his burial is not in Compton Martin and it was before 1837. I think a visit to Taunton is going to be essential this year. I don't think Somerset FHS are going to be at WDYTYA next weekend, but I hope to get inspiration anyway. I shall have to do a surname query now with the new name!