Culliford name change.

[sue2white]

Hi everybody.

I am researching Frederick Culliford and his family.
He was born in Walcot Bath in 1814.

On the 1861 census, his wife Eliza Ann Culliford of Pershore Worcs, described as Seaman's wife and children were living in Greenwich. He was 'absent' No marriage entry has ever been found for them. It is thought that they never married.

On the birth cerificates of their children, Eliza Ann uses various maiden names. The first and last certificate calls herRoberts
, the rest either Dudfield or Dutfield.

Frederick died in Greenwich in 1875 as a widower...however his 'wife' is to be found on the 1871 census, now Eliza Ann Finding, wife of William Finding with a Finding daughter and one of her Culliford sons. Frederick cannot be found on this census.

Eliza Ann married William Bone Finding in 1873 in the name of Eliza Ann Dutfield

This is the strangest thing... her Culliford children, some of whom were now married with their own children, later changed their surname to Dutfield - some even before their father died.

The question is... Why did they do this?

I have tried looking up newspaper reports for the time, to see whether Frederick Culliford did anything untoward, which would cause his 'wife' to leave him and his children to change their surname, but cannot find anything.

Also, why did Eliza Ann go by 'two/three' different maiden names. What was her real name?

This has been haunting me for some time. My maiden name should have been Culliford, but was indeed Dutfield!! Can anybody point me in the right direction to find the answers to ANY of my questions.

Thanks in anticipation

Sue

[suedent]

Eliza Ann may have been illegitimate & then "adopted" hence her use of two different maiden names.
In my own research I have come across one lady who used her 1st husband's surname as her maiden name for all but one of her eight children to her second husband.

My own grandmother married as Hoskin (her birth name) but when she had my father & his siblings registered she used her stepfather's surname as her maiden name.

As far as the second marriage goes, it may be that Eliza Ann hadn't been married to Frederick & that the relationship just broke down. If there had been no marriage then Frederick may have objected to them using his surname & if there had been no marriage they were in fact Dutfields.

Perhaps Frederick did do something unacceptable to Eliza & the children. It may not have been serious enough to have recorded in documents ie.being sent to prison. But obviously they wished to diassociate themselves from him.

This may well be one of those mysteries that never really gets cleared up. I think that every genealogist comes across at least one in their research, I know I have.

It's times like this that I think a seance might be a good idea so that we can try & get a few straight answers from our ancestors.

[sue2white]

Thanks for that.

I had thought that the reason why the family reverted to Dutfield, was because of the lack of a marriage.

But I had not occurred to me that the reason Eliza Ann used two maiden names may have been because she was unsure which was correct, due to illegitimacy. I had assumed she had plucked one of the names from the air!!

I still want to find out who her true parents were though.

Sue