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Hint [26 April 2011]
Sent to the Tapestry Mailing list, 26 April 2011
While some groups of immigrants used middle names from an early date (the Palatines, for example), the use of middle names did not become common practice until after about 1760. Middle names are rarely encountered in documents prior to 1760, become increasingly commonplace after that date, and are pervasive after about 1800.
There's a reason why they became common. Most likely in an increasingly documented society, where people were moving around quite a bit, there was a need to know "which John Walker", (etc) you were talking about. There's an early sheriff's return from Old Augusta, for example where the sheriff can't take action because he doesn't know which of several persons by the same name his charges apply to.
A common way of solving this problem without resort to middle names was the use of "by-names". This is particularly common in the case of tax records. We have take records for people in southwest Virginia, for instance, that refer to specific persons by their place of residence, or by family relations---for example, in the Castle's Woods area of SW VA there were two Samuel Porters. One lived in the Temple Hill area and the other was the son of Patrick Porter (lived on Falling Creek near Dungannon. They were referred to as "Samuel Porter of Temple Hill" and "Samuel Porter son of Patick".
Of course, by-names while useful, depend on people really knowing who is meant by a particular by-name. There's nothing official about such names...and they become meaningless is they move out of the community. If Samuel of temple Hill moved to Kentucky, for example (and he did for awhile) referring to him as "Samuel of Temple Hill" would be meaningless.
Introducing middle names changed this---as those names became part of your full name (just as last names did a century or three prior to that in most cases). If you were "John Wayne Smith" in southwest Virginia, you were still "John James Smith" if you moved to South Carolina. And so people became traceable, and track-able as middle names became standard.
The reason I bring this up is because I've found a nice example of the use of middle names in the Smith Willis family.
http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Family:John_Willis_and_Frances_Wallace_%281%29
In this case, the family appears to be consistently using portions of ancestors names as middle names---first born son Robert Smith Willis named after paternal grandfather (Smith Willis), First born daughter named after maternal grandmother Mary McMullen Willis, etc. Most of the children of this couple have surnames used as middle names. (Robert Smith Willis is an exception, where I presume he's named using his fathers first name---but perhaps "Smith" as a first name is based on Smith Willis' grandmothers last name?)
Its possible that these middle names were not actually assigned to the person at birth, but represent a "genealogists artifact"---some genealogists insert the parents last name to make up a distinguishable name for use in their records---This might be happening here, but I don't think so---as some of the names go deeper than the depth of genealogical information provided about the family. "Mary McMullen Willis" is clearly named after her mother family, but how about "Elizabeth Ware Willis"---don't see her in the antecedant tree on either side. There's probably a family member there somewhere that she's named after, but who that might be was apparently not known to the person identifying her as "Elizabeth Ware Willis"---so this probably really is her middle name.
Which brings us to another point....this may provide a basis for forcing the family tree backwards. In the case of Elizabeth Ware Willis, we'd like to find out who she's named for, and that might perhaps give us a clue as to another kinsman on one side of her tree or the other. In particular, we'd like to know why John Logan Willis has the middle name of Logan. This is one which we can fairly well confirm really is his name---as he appears in census records as "John L. Willis". Presumably "Logan" is an ancestral name used as a middle name. Can't say whether its on his mother's or fathers side, but this might be something to explore when looking for ancestors on either side. Q 07:41, 26 April 2011 (EDT)
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