OneGuyFromBarlick

John Marriott is the person I inherited my maiden name from, he is not my blood line.

Any of you who have followed my Widdup and Maylard research will know the story is quite complicated. My great grandmother Elizabeth Ann Maylard married John Marriott in the mid 1880s. They had three children. In the 1891 census elizabeth was living with her mother and three children, listed as married but no John Marriott present, indeed numerous searches have never found John Marriott. In 1896 my grandfather Wilfred Widdup was born in Leeds with John Roberts Widdup as named father. A man born in Barnoldswick who lived in Burnley from the mid 1880s and was very politically active with the SDF.

This however is about John Marriott. Wilfred became Wilfred Widdup Marriott by 1911, john Marriott had not returned, John Widdup had gone to Canada for a new life with new partner and a new family. Elizabeth had returned to her mothers home by 1901. In 1901 wilfred was Wilfred Widdup but in 1911 he was Wilfred Widdup Marriott. Wilfred went to school with his half siblings. He lived as a Marriott, so my Dad was a Marriott, so I was a Marriott although my blood line is Widdup.

Politics dominating my facebook page has really got me down recently so I joined a number of groups. A couple of sewing groups, a couple of local history groups and last week a genealogy group. I told my story and my search for Wilfred following his disappearance in 1925. It was a long shot and needless to say no one has come up with anything new. However in conversation I mentioned the missing John Marriott. A lady in America took up the gauntlet. She found my story complex and interesting. This morning I got an email. She had found John Marriott.

Everything checked out, parents names, age, birthplace, all on an army record. Now this is where it gets interesting, he joined the army in 1889 in Southampton. He changed his name to Conquest, his mothers name before she married George Marriott. He remarried in 1892 to an Annie Taylor. At this time he was still married to Elizabeth Ann, hence the name change I think. Elizabeth's third child, George was not born until Spring 1893. This leaves a question...who was Georges father. Was John leading a double life or did another person father George( possibly John Widdup) . John and Annie had many children, he died in a military hospital in 1911

This morning I contacted my true Marriott cousins in Tasmania with the story. This evening i have found and contacted a great grandaughter of John and Annie Conquest, true blood relatives of my cousins. I have promised to give the descendant information provided i am convinced it is the same couple.

Isn’t genealogy interesting

Yes, very interesting and very complex. Someone did a lot of research to find John Marriott. Then the intrigue of the name change, bigamy, misbegottens and all that stuff. I guess there are skeletons in most people's family history. I daren't look into mine. My eldest aunt knows the family history on my mother's side and usually brings up those born on the wrong side of the blanket. It was only recently that I found out that my paternal grandmother was born in Australia although I knew her sister lived in Adelaide. They were probably convicts transported there! Does that make me part-Aussie?

Well done for getting so far with your history.

I'm so glad for you Sue! I've followed your search for John Marriott for many years! As you know I have a name change and a few rather large skeletons in the cupboard but it never bothered me finding out about them. If any of you are interested, have a look for 'An Australian Life', it's all in there.

That is wonderful Sue! Sounds like an amazing bit of research to discover the name change.

I have confirmation that the lady I contacted is indeed descended from the first child of John Conquest and Annie Turner, and that this John Conquest is My John Marriott. She is astounded at the story but has taken it all in her stride and has asked for any other information I may have.

Not quite as complicated as Sues but back in the early 1970s i was working in Connemara in the west of Ireland and became involved with a Michael Ringrose who was hoping to set up a petri dish manufacturing operation, this fell thru because the price of went sky high, fast forward to early 2000, i started doing our family genealogy, my maternal side were Riley , tracing them i discovered that my grandfathers sister Mary had married a Ringrose, and yes the Michael i had worked with in the 1970s was my cousin !!

Bodger wrote: ↑29 Oct 2017, 08:29 Not quite as complicated as Sues but back in the early 1970s i was working in Connemara in the west of Ireland and became involved with a Michael Ringrose who was hoping to set up a petri dish manufacturing operation, this fell thru because the price of went sky high, fast forward to early 2000, i started doing our family genealogy, my maternal side were Riley , tracing them i discovered that my grandfathers sister Mary had married a Ringrose, and yes the Michael i had worked with in the 1970s was my cousin !!

That is a real coincidence. I have a good friend here in Rochdale. I did some family tree stuff for her and produced a little book. We found that an ancestor of her husbands cousin was married to one of my Widdup family!


My sister, unlike me was brought up in the Burnley area. Her best friend at school was a Widdup. We didn’t know at the time that we were too. Later i discovered that her best friend had in fact been a distant cousin

I have made a mess of it again

You just forgot to use the Insert Image function in the editor Sue. The string copied is correct, you just need to insert it between the BB codes generated by the Insert Image Icon.

An impressively complex tree, and what a wonderful name Conquest is, where does it come from?
I'm working on one at the moment for a lady in Colne that's frustrating me at every turn, I sent for a birth certificate to try and help but it made things even more complicated with a different christian name for the father of the first child of three but the same surname. Later on the surname changes from Ellis to Smith as if by magic!

I suspect that name changes were a lot more frequent than we suspect. One thing I discovered when searching for my dad in the army records was that many men enlisted under a false name to hide some skeleton in their cupboard. Marriott/Conquest could be something like that.
Oxford Surnames Dictionary gives first known mention of Conquest is 1248 and it appears to come from Old French and be directly related to the Norman Conquest.

Oxford Surnames Dictionary gives first known mention of Conquest is 1248 and it appears to come from Old French and be directly related to the Norman Conquest.



This does not surprise me, the Conquests seem to be from round Huntingdonshire