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« on: Saturday 28 September 19 12:51 BST (UK) »
Thank you for all comments on names. I think it may be significant that the grandson in question (my 3xgt grandfather, John Robert Overton (1783-1847) a Linen Draper in Dorking Surrey always used both his names. His only uncle was of course the Cabinet Maker John Robert Sollicoffre, which I hope indicates that Henry and Andrew were the same man! Andrew wasn't a "Sollicoffer" name any more than Henry was, but I have found references to several Henrys. And my favourite is the fur trader, which would fit in with him going to sea? Dyers were having a hard time in the 1750s. Recruitment of Landlubbers to crew ships to Canad during the Seven Years War was common. Henry might have combined the need to make money apart from dyeing by going to sea. He may have been to sea before anyway as a passenger when working for a family fur importing firm. I don't think I shall find any record of a death at sea in the Seven Years War, but I think the Carpenters Company records are proof that, to Esther anyway, he was dead - or had not returned to her.
As to the women, they all seemed to have two or three Christian names each long before the ordinary English copied them, and they used whichever they felt like? EXCEPT in a will, when my heroine Judith Esther Louisa use all three. Her daughter Judith Dorothea was named after her godmother Dorothea Zollicoffer (spelled with a Z. A relation of her father, probably not in London) who was represented by Francoise Elizabeth Favre (presumably a relation of her mother who was in London)