Can you read the bride's surname?

[peter]

My ancestor Francis Medley married at Great Tey, Essex on 9th June 1702. Can you figure out what the bride's name was? Bear in mind that the word 'were' must be at the end of the line. There are lots of Ancestry trees which interpret the surname as 'Turner' but I just can't see it. Currently my best guess is that it begins with 'Th', possibly 'Thorn', but it is probably just in my imagination.

 

[Pauline]

Is this the whole of your copy or just an extract? It would be useful to see further examples of some letters, as we really have only the shapes to go on here, so the more to compare the better. I think the start could be ‘Th’ but to me the end looks like ‘er’, so I wondered about Thrower, but I am far from certain.

 

[peter]

Here's the whole page:

 

[Pauline]

Thank you, and comparing the marriage of Thomas Clarke and Hannah Horne lower down the page in October 1706, the starting 'Th' looks plausible, but while the ending has some similarities with the end of Horne, I think there is something after the 'e' which could be an 'r'. Many of the month endings use a different 'e', but the end of November in 1704 looks similar. Then the 'were' at the end of the line in question seems to start at a slightly lower level before fading out.

The middle letter of the mystery surname seems to go down and then up to join the 'e', so 'n' 'm' or 'w' perhaps but the bit before is very unclear, and I'm not sure how many letters there are there. The link from what looks like an 'h' seems to go to the top of the next letter but then it might also do so in Thomas below.

The possible final 'r' may be why some people can see Turner but I don't think it starts 'Tu'.

 

[peter]

The possible final 'r' may be why some people can see Turner but I don't think it starts 'Tu'.

I've now found the 'source' of the spurious Turner surname, it's a Geneanet tree which hasn't been updated since 2010. I originally interpreted the surname as Thomson.

For what it's worth, according to Ancestry the only baptisms in Essex during the right period with the forename Hannah and surname beginning 'Th' are Thomson, Theedam, Thorne, Thurgood, and Tho???

 

[Pauline]

Overall the surname looks more like Thorne than any of the others but I still think there's another letter - probably an 'r' - after the 'e'. So I think I'd hesitate to commit to Thorne on the basis of this entry alone. Have you got anywhere with trying to enhance the image, or is this an enhanced version?

 

[peter]

Have you got anywhere with trying to enhance the image, or is this an enhanced version?

The images at Essex Archives Online are pretty high resolution. and when I've tried to increase the resolution in Irfanview it has become, if anything, less legible. I have to go to Chelmsford tomorrow so might be able to call in at the Essex Record Office, though whether they'll let me see the register is another matter. Seeing it in 3D might just make the difference.

 

[Pauline]

Ask if you can look at it under UV light - that often does the trick. I’ve never been to Essex RO, but elsewhere I’ve always found they are happy to oblige with the original register if an entry is otherwise unreadable.

Trying to increase the image resolution doesn’t help, but tweaking the colours, contrast, brightness etc might. It’s usually worth a try.

 

[peter]

Made it to the Essex Record Office, which was very quiet. I now agree that the surname looks like 'Turner'. The 'h' which I thought I could see in the digitised image turns out to be illusory, and viewing it under UV didn't change this.

Unfortunately there are no Hannah Turner baptisms around the right time in parishes close to Great Tey.

 

[Pauline]

Interesting! When I tried playing with the image I didn’t get any further in deciphering the name, but it did make me feel more reassured about that ‘h’, which turns out after all to be illusory. It just goes to show how even high quality images can sometimes mislead us, and why it so important that originals are not destroyed after digitisation.