Many thanks for Paul Blake’s article on name changes in the March issue. When I started researching my mother’s family I found her mother, Elizabeth Barnes, on the 1901 census, with her parents, John and Sarah Ann Barnes, and three brothers in Godley, Hyde, Cheshire. However, I could not go back any further. A conversation with an elderly uncle explained why.
Firstly, John Barnes, my mother’s grandfather, was actually born and brought up as John Bee. I was then able to find that he married Sarah Ann Millray as John Bee, and that my grandmother and her three brothers were registered as Bees, all in the Barrow/Ulverston area. The youngest son, Harold, was born in 1898. Some time between then and 1901 the family moved to Cheshire and changed their name to Barnes – John’s mother’s maiden name.
The second piece of information my uncle shared was that the older of the three brothers, William Henry, known as Billy, had gone to the USA under something of a cloud but had apparently done well for himself. The 1911 census shows him in Strangeways prison – I don’t
