Find Ancestors

You can just change your name, no need to pay the cost of deed poll. Sometimes people would (and still do!) put an ad in the local newspaper to say something like ...... :I, John Smith, will hence forward be known as Jack Stewart, and will not be responsible for any debts incurred by John Smith".

That might be traceable if you can find the newspaper.

It's legal, unless you are intending to then commit a crime under the new name.

you mentioned about a widow reverting back to her old name , but what about changing your name by deed poll can they be traced as in years i have tried to find people i an thinking that is what they have done i know one has, as my son asked if i would mind ,

I "lost" a family that I was researching for someone else. They just disappeared from all records for years, I used every little technique I knew ....... mispelled surnames, wild cards, using only surname or only forename, looking for the children, etc etc. I searched censuses forward and back ....... they'd always lived in one village up to the census after which they disappeared, but going forward eventually brought up one of the younger children with correct surname back living in the "home" village.

After much more searching, I discovered the family had changed their surname completely, keeping the forenames, and moved away from "home" after that last census. They remained in the new place for around 30 more years, then the father died and the children AND their mother reverted back to using the "old" surname between his death and the next census (no record of when)".

I did eventually manage to trace them all and get their histories EXCEPT for discovering why the father had changed the surname and why the remaining family had reverted back after his death.

The implication of course was that father was escaping from something.

I did look for criminal charges but couldn't find anything :-D

Sadly, parish records from coastal districts show many unknown people, mostly male found washed ashore. Often there was no way of identifying them, although I have seen additional notes added later, eg. one man found on the shore was later identified by the watch he was wearing and his name was then added in the burial register.

I 'lost' a family in a census, they were nowhere to be found, but I knew they were alive and likely to be in Southampton, as there were family events recorded in the following years.
By trawling the images of streets in a likely area, I found them. They had been indexed under the surname of near neighbours, whereas the actual image showed it was definitely my ancestors.

Most of the "unknown" deaths on Findmypast are taken from "England Billion Graves Cemetery Index" and if you click on the link from the record there is usually a photo of the headstone and names that are on nearby headstones.

Kath. x

Unfortunately it's never possible to know if any of them is the "lost" person, so the mystery always remains.

Not research , but something to consider if someone just disappears from the records. I just put 'Unknown' in as a surname into FreeBMD, and got over 50,000 hits. Hundreds every year. Must be people who sadly passed away from home and were never identified.

Andy