In this modern era, we’ve become accustomed to using our full legal birth names on all official documents, but going back 100 years, this wasn’t always so. Middle names were used as first names, nicknames written on official documents, variations of spellings, whether intentional accidental, and the fashionable use of just initials in front of the surname.
Continuing the search for Grandma Lillian.
The woman I knew as Grandma Lillian Huff falls into this catagory. Her descendants knew her as Lillian Margaret, her marriage license has simply Lilian (one l), the 1900 census lists her as Margaret and subsequent censuses, as Margaret L.. Knowing that her mother was German, I decided to look up the German variations and nicknames of given names and their English equivalents. Ludwig is Lewis, Johann is John, etc.. Well, there is no Lillian in common German name usage but there is Lili, a nickname for Elizabeth! So maybe Lilian on her marriage license wasn’t a misspelling?
German names - https://www.behindthename.com/names/usage/german
There was another custom prevalent among our ancestors, having more than one child with the same name. No, not like George Foreman! If a child died in infancy or at a very young age, they would often reuse the name for one of the next children. Grandma Lillian’s parents, William and Christina, had a daughter named Emma born in 1859 who died onOctober 4, 1861. Then in 1864, they had another daughter and named her Emma/Emily.
In piecing together Lillian’s past by researching her family members, I found in Christina’s obituary that she had had a sister who had married a man named E.C. King. But which sister? Rose and Adelaide were accounted for, several older sisters (that I already knew about) had died before their mother. Then, comparing census records for the umpteenth time, I realized that there were two Emma/Emilys. Then came the task of discovering who E.C. King was. There were those pesky initials! It took a bit of research and digging to find his full name - Edward Cooper King.
William and Christina Also had an older daughter named Elizabeth and William had a daughter named Margaret from his first marriage with Louisa Powers. Could Lillian’s birth name have been Elizabeth Margaret? There is still an issue of when she was born. If it was after 1874, then she was illegitimate since William definitely died in 1873 and Christina never remarried. She also could have fudged her age so as not to seem improper marrying a 21 year old Edgar Huff. Either way, she doesn’t appear in the 1880 census with the rest of her siblings. So where and who was she living? Perhaps she was with Christina’s family. The next step is to unravel the history of the Hummers and search from there.
Stay tuned!
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