Author Topic: Children abandoning their parents?  (Read 3031 times)

Offline M_ONeill

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Re: Children abandoning their parents?
« Reply #18 on: Tuesday 16 October 18 17:26 BST (UK) »
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Re surname. Could everyone concerned read and write? Some people's surnames were altered in records without their knowledge because they were illiterate. I assume Joseph would have been known in his birthplace as Joseph Monk.

That's actually something I've been thinking about recently as it seems as if the family was somewhat literate - but not consistently so.
  • William Monkton can sign his name by his 1833 marriage (even if his handwriting isn't so perfect).
  • Edward Monkton apparently can't write his name - either witnessing William's marriage above or at his own in 1835
  • John Monkton can't write his name in his 1836 marriage.
  • Joseph Monkton can sign his name by his 1836 marriage in Pattingham (notably small and crabbed letters).
  • James or Thomas never seem to have married or signed documents, so I don't know about them.

So strangely, it seems as if the eldest and youngest brothers could write by the mid 1830s, but their brothers couldn't. Either way, they were deliberately using the name Monkton, rather than it being clerical error.

I had the same thought about Joseph being known as Monk back in Rock. Though strangely, when Edward goes back from ~1844 to sometime before 1861 he uses Monkton, despite presumably being known by his birth name. Still, given he brought a wife and family he had had under Monkton with him, he probably couldn't go back even if he wanted to. Or maybe his father was dead/dying and so it didn't matter.

Offline Maiden Stone

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Re: Children abandoning their parents?
« Reply #19 on: Tuesday 16 October 18 20:00 BST (UK) »
Quote
Re surname. Could everyone concerned read and write? Some people's surnames were altered in records without their knowledge because they were illiterate. I assume Joseph would have been known in his birthplace as Joseph Monk.

That's actually something I've been thinking about recently as it seems as if the family was somewhat literate - but not consistently so.  ….

So strangely, it seems as if the eldest and youngest brothers could write by the mid 1830s, but their brothers couldn't. Either way, they were deliberately using the name Monkton, rather than it being clerical error.

I had the same thought about Joseph being known as Monk back in Rock. Though strangely, when Edward goes back from ~1844 to sometime before 1861 he uses Monkton, despite presumably being known by his birth name. Still, given he brought a wife and family he had had under Monkton with him, he probably couldn't go back even if he wanted to. Or maybe his father was dead/dying and so it didn't matter.

They may have adapted their name to Monkton in the new place, if as you said in an earlier post, it was the name of a prominent local family. It might have done no harm for a family of newcomers to seem to be connected to an established family. ("Tess of the d'Urbevilles" comes to mind.)

Joseph would have had no say in how his name was written after his death.
Did any of them leave wills?
Cowban

Offline M_ONeill

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Re: Children abandoning their parents?
« Reply #20 on: Tuesday 16 October 18 21:58 BST (UK) »
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They may have adapted their name to Monkton in the new place, if as you said in an earlier post, it was the name of a prominent local family. It might have done no harm for a family of newcomers to seem to be connected to an established family. ("Tess of the d'Urbevilles" comes to mind.)

Would that kind of social climbing have been that important to a family who were still all basically doing agricultural labouring? I'm not that up to speed on this area of 19th century social history, so maybe it was.

Quote
Joseph would have had no say in how his name was written after his death.
Did any of them leave wills?

I did a quick check for wills and there were none that I could find. The only Monckton will in Wolverhampton was that of General Henry Monckton - an offshoot of the Moncktons of Brewood. I tried to read it, but my palaeography is not that good.  :D

Offline M_ONeill

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Re: Children abandoning their parents?
« Reply #21 on: Wednesday 17 October 18 19:19 BST (UK) »
Well, in one sense, I've at least answered the question at the beginning of this thread - William Monk was not abandoned by his children - at least not at the end.

In another sense, the mystery deepens...

I've obtained a PDF of William Monk's death certificate for the 17th Dec 1844. William was a labourer, aged 69 years and died of 'Dropsy'. The witness to his death, Edward Monk.

So I now know that when Edward returned to Rock, he did so under his original name. Which makes sense, I suppose. There would likely be people there who knew him as a child, not to mention his father. I was even able to find the Baptismal record for the child he and his wife had in Rock not two months before William's death; Edward James Monk.

And yet, by the time the 1851 census rolls around seven years later, they are all listed as Monkton, even Edward James. So they either gave up on calling themselves Monk after William's death or, and I think this slightly more likely, they lived openly in the village as 'Monk', while still considering themselves 'Moncktons'. By the time they'd moved up to Shropshire, they've gone back to openly being Moncktons.

I'm not sure what to make of it all, really. It's clear that no matter what they did, they were known under the name Monk in rock, but were really, really adamant to use their new name everywhere they could, even in the secrecy of the census return.


Offline M_ONeill

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Re: Children abandoning their parents?
« Reply #22 on: Friday 19 October 18 16:42 BST (UK) »
So today I got the PDF of Joseph's death certificate. He died of 'dropsy' on the 13th of May 1839 aged 26 years old. Witness was Ann 'Monk', present at the death. So my theory that Joseph may have abandoned Ann was wide of the mark.

They're over 20 miles away from the village where they baptised their son only two months prior, though. Makes me wonder why they're down there, rather than in Wolverhampton. I read somewhere that there were pretty bad outbreaks of disease round about this time in Wolverhampton.