Surname in will

[Pauline]

Would anyone be able to help me with reading a surname in a 1717 will, please? I've posted an extract from the will below, but for further handwriting comparison, the will is that of a John Ferrers of Minchinhampton, in the Gloucestershire Wills and Inventories 1541-1858 set at Ancestry.

The surname puzzling me is more or less in the middle of the extract (near the bottom of the full will), just below the name Rebecca, and between "my daughter" and "and her children". The context of the will suggests this will likely be the daughter's married surname (no forename given), as in "my daughter Smith", but I haven't been able to find a likely marriage.

My reading of the surname is L o h e ? r - but that hasn't got me anywhere so far.

Any suggestions, please?



(As an aside, I wasn't able to upload this image using Chrome, and had to switch to Firefox to do it.)

 

[peter]

(As an aside, I wasn't able to upload this image using Chrome, and had to switch to Firefox to do it.)

Posted using Chrome.

 

[peter]

this will likely be the daughter's married surname

I can't say that I've ever seen a daughter called by her husband's surname, but I don't have many wills for my family from this period. In later wills it's usual to write something along the lines of "my daughter Mary, wife of John Smith". I'd still think it more likely that it's a forename than a surname. Perhaps Sophia?

 

[Pauline]

I can't say that I've ever seen a daughter called by her husband's surname, but I don't have many wills for my family from this period. In later wills it's usual to write something along the lines of "my daughter Mary, wife of John Smith". I'd still think it more likely that it's a forename than a surname. Perhaps Sophia?

You can just about see in the extract I posted that the will also refers to "my daughter Rebecca Ferrers" and "my daughter Martha Ferrers", but the testator also refers to another daughter who had married Thomas Roberts as "my daughter Roberts":



I'm pretty sure the first letter of the mystery surname is 'L' rather than 'S', but I can't think of any forenames L o h e ? r either.

(I'm still having problems uploading an image in Chrome, but I have no idea why - it's never happened before. I get this:

and the only option is to close. However, I saved the thread and then switched to Firefox and the image was sitting there waiting for me to choose Thumbnail or Full Image. Very odd! But never mind, I'm more interested in the mystery surname at present!)

 

[peter]

I'm still having problems uploading an image in Chrome, but I have no idea why - it's never happened before. I get this:

That's how files are uploaded - it allows you to upload a wide range of file formats. However small image files can just be pasted into a message, and perhaps that's what you've always done previously?

 

[Pauline]

I can't say that I've ever seen a daughter called by her husband's surname, but I don't have many wills for my family from this period.

Thinking about it, I've come across this in a number of wills, possibly from a similar time, and as well as "my daughter Smith", I've seen variations such as "my sister Smith".

The phrase you mention - "my daughter Mary, wife of John Smith" - is much more helpful! For John Ferrers' daughter with the mystery surname, I don't know her forename or that of her husband, and since I don't know when John Ferrers married, he may have had more daughters than I have found baptisms for.

 

[Susan48]

Just a thought - could it be a phonetically spelt form of Leah?

 

[At home in NZ]

I can see Lenora.

 

[JoyNor]

I looked at the full will and would hazard a guess that is is a second bequest to his daughter Roberts. Badly written (the quill was short of ink?), and the writer does seem to be squishing things onto the paper at this point, as the next line almost appears to have been added into the previous gap between this one and the final main line. If you look a few lines up at the first mention of daughter Roberts the mystery name does have much the same shape. And on the first bequest to daughter Roberts he does not mention her children as getting any part unless she dies.

BTW it looks like Martha was doing pretty well out of this!

A friend who had a real eye for reading these old documents sadly passed away a couple of years ago and I do miss her input when I get a problem like this.

 

[Pauline]

Many thanks for all the input and suggestions. I guess the problem with any name in wills of this age is that the spelling depends on the writer and phonetic variations always have to be considered. An added problem with this will is that having been digitised in black and white some letters are faint or partly missing in the image, and it may be that only by viewing the original under ultra violet light will the name become fully clear.

I still feel the name is more likely to be a surname than a forename, and am now wondering if the problem 5th letter may be an 'i', with the dot above touching the continuation of the 'e' before it. So the surname would then read L o h e i r which might have a number of phonetic variations, possibly including Lokier, which appears in the Minchinhampton register, and which may be a variant of Lockier and Lockyer.

This possibility hasn't got me anywhere so far but hopefully further investigations will eventually prove fruitful.

 

[Pauline]

I looked at the full will

I don't know about you, but I get the impression that John Ferrers penned his own will. The squashed up bit near the bottom may well be at least partly down to an omitted bequest inserted later between the lines.

Martha was the youngest daughter and had perhaps taken over running the household when her mother (Rebecca) died in 1710, and so inherited all John's household goods. The other property left to her was to go to her younger brother Noah as soon as he had repaid the £50 he owed, so not hers to keep for ever.

Since I don't have a marriage for John Ferrers and Rebecca, which may have been lost due to the Commonwealth gap, there is always the possibility that the daughter with the mystery surname was actually a step daughter, which may account for the smaller bequest to her and her children. However, as yet I still have two daughters, Elizabeth and Sarah, unaccounted for after their respective baptisms.

 

[Pauline]

her mother (Rebecca) died in 1710

Oops - Rebecca was second wife of John Ferrers. She did die in 1710 but Martha's mother was Hannah, and had died in 1673/4.

 

[Pauline]

I may possibly have made some progress with this. Firstly, by browsing through the Minchinhampton registers I found the burial of the daughter Sarah, which left me with just one known daughter - Elizabeth - who might have been the one in the will with the unclear surname.

There was the marriage of an Elizabeth Farras at St James Duke Place, London in 1685 to a David Lawyer, widower. Following through on this, it seems the surname was also spelt Lowyer and, assuming I am correct in thinking that it is the same couple, also appears as Lohier and Loheir, with baptisms and burials in the parish of St Giles in the Fields.

So this Elizabeth just may be the daughter Loheir in the will (if that's what it says). However, I am struggling to find enough evidence to confirm this one way or the other.

 

[Helen7]

The squashed up bit near the bottom may well be at least partly down to an omitted bequest inserted later between the lines.

Who was the son in law mentioned in the 'inserted' line just below the daughter Loheir? Looks like: 'my son in law Daniel Holbrow's four children Rebecca, Hanna, William and Mary.' Which of John Ferrers' daughters was he married to?

 

[Pauline]

Who was the son in law mentioned in the 'inserted' line just below the daughter Loheir? Looks like: 'my son in law Daniel Holbrow's four children Rebecca, Hanna, William and Mary.' Which of John Ferrers' daughters was he married to?

The oldest daughter Hannah married Daniel Holbrow in 1682 but had died in 1690. She and Daniel had 5 children together but one died young.

 

[Pauline]

Gloucestershire Archives have very kindly looked at this will for me. They say the original handwriting in this extract is miniscule and open to error even under a magnifying glass, but their first suggestion for the surname was Loheir.

So now I need to see if I can determine if the 1685 marriage of Elizabeth Farras (see #13 above) was the right one or not, which so far isn't proving very easy.

 

[JoyNor]

I think you have cracked it Pauline, with that help from the Archives Service. Perhaps a phoenetic version of whatever the name actually was - makes perfect sense. Good luck with finding that marriage. I was recently chasing a similarly partly legible name. The original was very faint but the shape of the name was certainly NOT what had been transcribed by both Ancestry and a Family History Society. I got a friend to have a look and he agreed with me that it was the name I wished it to be! |||||||||||||It is all good exercise for the little grey cells.