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Women’s Name Changes

Women’s Name Changes

by Justin Durand

Some months ago I promised to find and post this quote about the practice in the Middle Ages of sometimes changing the given name of a wife. It wasn’t widespread, but it happened often enough to be worth noticing:

“The wife was sometimes so completely absorbed into the family of the one man who had the right to give her children that her own Christian name was changed. (At that time there was no family name or surname handed down from generation to generation.) Mathilde might thus become Blanche or Rose — a mark of her complete break with the past, her completed capture. Yet if she was to play her part in the house and fill it with legitimate children, her blood and her womb were necessary. And in her offspring that which came from her ancestors through her blood would mix with that which her husband inherited through his blood from his ancestors.

“This conjunction was openly proclaimed in the choice of names for the children: boys and girls were named after forebears from both the father’s and the mother’s side. A family might appropriate a wife by changing her name, yet outsiders might still invade the clan in the form of the descendants named after them.”

Georges Duby, The Knight, the Lady and the Priest: The Making of Modern Marriage in Medieval France (1983), 44-45.

Rightful king of England

Rightful king of England

by Justin Durand

“Rightful king of England dies”, The Mirror, July 5, 2012.

On a slow news day the papers love these little stories. Even when it’s not a slow news day, everyone loves the Wars of the Roses.

Back in the day, Edward IV (1442-1483) was the penultimate king of the Yorkist dynasty. The Wars of the Roses were over, the Lancastrians pretty much extinct. Then he died and it all fell apart. His younger brother Richard of Gloucester grabbed the throne (as Richard III). Edward’s sons mysteriously disappeared. Henry Tudor, the soi-disant Lancastrian claimant, invaded England, deposed Richard, made himself king as Henry VII, and married Edward’s oldest daughter. Their son Henry VIII was heir to both Yorkist and Lancastrians. The Wars of the Roses were now truly over.

One prong of Richard III’s propaganda to justify taking the throne was that his brother Edward IV was illegitimate. And, Richard claimed that Edward IV’s children were also illegitimate. Finally, an attainder disqualified his next brother George of Clarence.

If we like playing “what if”, we can think about these details and wonder who should have been king. Richard III left no descendants. If Edward IV had really been illegitimate, an attainder would not have stopped brother George’s descendants from claiming the throne as representatives of the Yorkist line.

And that’s what this article does. If, and it’s a big if, George was the Yorkist claimant, and if Henry Tudor hadn’t conquered England, then George’s modern heir could claim to be the rightful king of England. Not Scotland, though. All that came later.

George’s modern heir is an Australian forklift driver, Michael Abney-Hastings, who happens to be 14th Earl of Loudon. He died. His son Simon is the new Earl, and new Yorkist kind-of claimant. Big news.

Gathering the Tribes: Mormons from England

Gathering the Tribes: Mormons from England

by Justin Durand

This little BBC piece about Mitt Romney’s Mormon ancestors captures some of the zeitgeist of the lives of many Mormon immigrants from England.

Mitt Romney’s English Mormon Roots

The Mormons “believed that Jesus had visited America, and that he would return there soon.” Their message was, “Jesus is coming – he’s coming to America. We’ll help you get there.” Not only did Jesus visit America, but certain privileged Europeans were actually members of the Ten Lost Tribes, being called to re-gather in the New Zion.

Like the Romneys, my Quarmby ancestors also converted to Mormonism at Preston near Manchester in the 1830s. John Quarmby was a cloth dresser, a common occupation in this part of England where the main industry was textile mills. The workers struggled to eke out a living. The factory owners became rich. John was also a music instructor, supplementing his meager income. He and his wife Ann had eight children, but lost five of them.  It doesn’t surprise me they looked to religion for comfort.

The Quarmbys converted to Mormonism, but it didn’t turn into the same dream for them that it did for the Romneys. 

John and Ann brought their three surviving children to America in 1845, through the port of New Orleans, then up the Mississippi River to Nauvoo, the Mormon capital. Unfortunately for them, Nauvoo was built on swamp land. John died a few months later of “swamp fever” — malaria. The two older children also died, but their deaths were unrecorded. No one is sure, but according to one family tradition, Ann survived long enough to be expelled from Nauvoo by Gentile mobs, then died of starvation and fever during the winter of 1846/47 at Winter Quarters, outside Omaha, Nebraska.

The only surviving member of the family, little Annie, age 5, was taken in by Bishop Joseph Bates Noble. She made the long trek to the new Zion in Salt Lake City to become one of the Valley’s first pioneers (1847). She told her children and grandchildren that she walked every step of the way alongside the handcart. (I hope that’s an exaggeration, but it might be true.)

Annie Quarmby

As an adult, Annie didn’t know her parent’s names, or even her birthday. Her whole history was lost. The Nobles couldn’t help; she was just an orphan they picked up in all the confusion. How could they be expected to know who she was or where she came from? Her mother had been a member of the Bishop’s Ward, so they got stuck with her. They raised her, and at 15, when she was so ungrateful that she refused to marry her foster father, they made life hell for her until she ran away. 

When I read the story about Mitt Romney and his English roots, I’m happy for him that his family succeeded in America. I just wish we could spend more time celebrating the people for whom a new life in America was a genuine struggle.