Who says our ancestors didn’t have a sense of humour? Sure, they never smiled in photos, their lives were often hard and much shorter than they are today. It didn’t mean they couldn’t insert some joy into their lives, though – and with the coronation of King Charles III rapidly approaching, I thought this example quite amusing.
While researching the Smart family (Dad’s paternal side of the tree – Thomas Clark Smart (1761-1843) was my fifth great-grandfather, grandfather of Thomas Mason, of Mason’s Gardens in Taita, Lower Hutt), I came across a set of siblings who had been given some rather unique names. Thomas Clark Smart’s brother and business partner Benjamin Smart Jr rented the premises of their father Benjamin Sr’s hugely successful cotton-spinning enterprise in Rock Mills, Warwickshire, from 1797, turning it into a dual-purpose venture for corn and cotton.
Benjamin Jr was born, like his brother Thomas, into the Quaker faith. However, he was a “less devout member” than others in his family and left the Society in 1812. After his first wife died (no children having been born of the marriage), he ran off to Gretna Green in Scotland and remarried at the age of fifty-four, in 1821, to a Rebecca Robbins.
Why they should have run away to be married is a mystery. Rebecca was a good twenty-two years younger than him, but she was well over the age of parental consent (in England at that time, 21 years), additionally, her parents had died so she could have theoretically done what she wished. Counting backward from their first child’s birth, she was almost certainly pregnant at the time they married, however, so perhaps they wished to avoid any scandal.
So far, so normal. Having a child out of wedlock in those days was unusual, but certainly not unheard of.
Benjamin and Rebecca had five children over the next eight years. What was so unusual in this case is that each one was given a regal name:
- Princess Augusta (Augusta) Smart b.1822
- Madam Maria Theresa Smart b.1823
- Sir Benjamin Smart b.1825
- Master Benjamin Smart b.1827
- Prince Benjamin Smart b.1829
There is nothing to indicate why they did such a thing. It is one thing to call your child a ‘little madam’, or ‘my little prince’… quite another to actually name them that – and makes for an interesting side-note to the family tree!
Sources:
Lane, Joan. “The Textile Industries,” Apprenticeship In England, 1600-1914.” Google Books (Taylor and Francis, 2005), p.152 <https://www.google.co.nz/books/edition/Apprenticeship_In_England_1600_1914/_IONAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0 : accessed 3 May 2023>
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Have you found any unusual or unique names in your family? I'd love to hear about them! -- Nicola
Kinship Genealogy Co. 
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