TREWREN

[white]

Correction to the earlier posting
Thomas Trewren and Seyley Keatren
son Joseph bapt.29 mar.1670 at Sancreed
married Elizabeth Couch 23 nov 1714 at St.Hilary.
son, Joseph bapt.15 aprril 1721 at St.Hilary married Thomasin Blight 23 dec.1745 at Ludgvan.
son George bapt. 14may 1752 at St. Hilary married Catherine Hall 7feb. 1774 at Ludgvan.
son, William bapt.19 june 1785 at Ludgvan married Mary Uren 11may 1814 at LUDGVAN.
This is a bare outline.More available if you cantact me direct.
Roy

[carolc]

Hi:

The Gabriel Trewren son of Francis is one of mine.

Could Mitchell be a form of Michael? Also, this is a period when surnames are still being adopted.

[tonymitch]

Agreed...Mitchell is a patronymic, a form of Michael. This doesn't however answer why 'alias'? An alias is sometimes listed as AKA (also known as) Why should the Trewrens be also known as Mitchell for more than 100 years?

Tony M

[carolc]

The use of an alias seems to be more common the further back you go. Could it be Mitchell of Trewren? Trewren could be either a place name or a farm or a manor.

Here's another possible explanation:

archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/CORNISH/1999-10/0939424739

[tonymitch]

Thanks Carol.....the web site explanation sounds good to me. Never thought of that. This means that the Trewren's must have packed some punch in the olden days.

Tony M

[carolc]

I did find another couple of articles regarding Trewren:

myweb.tiscali.co.uk/truranfamilyhistory/new_page_10.htm

www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=50617

tinyurl.com/ckcvym

[trencrom]

From memory we have discussed alias names on this forum before. While I have looked at the website that carole has supplied the link to, after reading what was posted on that site I have to say that as someone with some extensive experience myself in Cornish genealogy I disagree with the explanations given therein for the existence of "alias" surnames.

As a rule at that time in the gentry levels of society and higher a woman typically did bring some money to her husband upon marriage. There are consequently numerous instances of this and I cannot recall seeing any alias names resulting from that process. The fact that alias names were often borne by families in much lower levels of society also argues against the idea that they indicate a coming into money.

I have seen one instance -- in the medieval period -- where a name change occurred as a result of a man marrying an heiress whose family name was much more prestigious than his own, and another (again in the medieval period) where the younger son of an heiress inherited from his maternal grandfather and took the grandfather's surname thereafter accordingly, but these are both rather rare events and in each instance no alias name was used in succeeding generations of the family.

Generally alias surnames appear in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and die out thereafter. One of the surnames involved is usually a very common patronymic, the other can be a patronymic as well but in some instances it is clearly a locality name. That does not necessarily mean though that the family were living at that locality at the time that they were using that locality name as a surname, although they may well have originated from there. I agree that this process reflects the gradual standardisation of surnames during the era in question.

Sometimes such a family would use one of the surnames by itself, sometimes it will appear in the records under the other surname by itself, and sometimes with both.

Trencrom

[Mal]

I am going to stick my fourpence worth in now!

Regarding aliases. So far I have been given the following explanations for aliases

1. Illegitimacy, especially if the father were a little more "well-to-do", but not always.
2. The marrying into families and the complications with heirs and heiresses as has been discussed here.
3. The changing or adopting of new surnames.

What Trencrom says is true. The Godolphin family took the name through a female line. The old English peerage did accomodate a female line of inheritance and thus the rules regarding "abeyance", I am not sure if this still be the case but before 1707 and the creation of the British Peerage I think it certainly was the case in ENGLAND, by default Cornwall too.

As for changing names, well a curious thing occurs in the Maddern/Maddron family- their original name having been Cossen(s) and no real explanation of this has ever been given other than that they were quite active in the Civil War and perhaps a name change was poltically astute at the time. Cfr the British Royal Family, Windsor or Saxon-Coburg-Gotha.

I too have an "annoying" alias in my family. James Gendal alias Davies. I have not been able to find much about him whatsoever but because my brickwall starts/finishes with William Davies who married Mary Gendal it has left me wondering.

Getting back to the general idea of aliases, well there was no civil registration, names could be changed more arbitrarily for many reasons, as late as the early 1800's some still did not have fixed surnames so I think any one of the above reasons in a given family might be valid. In the case of an alias name being carried on through three generations or so, it does suggest that it was probably not an illegitimacy issue, "not FitzMitchell" in any case.

[donne]

It seems to me that surnames were variable even as late as the 16/17th centuries. If you look at the St Erth burial PR transcriptions on-line, there are several entries like 'Rawe, servant to James Thomas' (1599) or 'English, servant to Richard Vincent' (1600). The implication is that the family names of these individuals were never known or used and they or their children may well have ended up adopting the name of the person or family who employed them.

[kerthen]

Indeed, as Roger pointed out, there are quite a lot of RAWE/ROWE/ROA/RALPH people in St Erth and St Hilary who seem to fly beneath the radar by changing their surname to perhaps an employer's name or one of the other variations (RALPHs become ROWEs and vice-versa with astonishing frequency).

I am trying to come to terms with RALPH/ROWE family members who were called CHEPY or CHAPY or CHEPI (or variants) in the 16th and early 17th centuries in St Hilary and St Erth. It seems possible that they came from Gunwalloe where there is a CHEPYE tenement and a fair number of RALPHs/ROWEs.

What I'd be interested to know is WHY they chose to be RALPH or ROWE or CHEPY when they were choosing?

And, of course, while we are at it, I will make my plea again for any explanation of the "identifier" GIDE which was used with one of the Mary HOSKIN/HOSKEN/HOSKINGs of Ludgvan about 1800. This wasn't an alias, but like an alias identified which Mary HOSKING the overseers were writing about in their records. Apologies for posting it to the wrong thread.

[Cornish Terrier]

Afraid I am not able to help on any of these last questions at the moment.

Have had another look around to see if I could find some sort of meaning for"gide" but to no avail.

However I do have something to offer the thread for anyone who might be missing a marriage:-

Robert TREWREN, of Ludgvan, & Grace LOB 4th August 1804 at Perranuthnoe

Not sure yet which Robert this is but hopefully the entry will be of help to someone.

CT

[lipkatatar]

I have both Trewrens and Trewrens alias Michell in my ancestry.

The earliest Trewren alias Michell I have found is Thomas Myhell from Sancreed who married twice around 1570 and 1581. Thomas Myhell, his children and his grandchildren sometimes appear as Trewren alias Michell or sometimes just as Michell (possibly some of them appear just as Trewren but I have not followed their history too closely).

The two most likely reasons for the Trewren alias Michell name is that either this family were Michells from Trewren, or that they were in some way related to the Trewren family and wanted to show this off. At the end of the 16th century the Trewren family were making a few marriages with well connected families like the Chivertons who were related to Norman English gentry, nobility and royalty. Trewrens appear in the Lanyon and Chiverton entries in the 1620 Visitations of Cornwall.