The February 2022 Family Tree Academy piece on the importance of names in family history research inspired reader Geoff Manning to write in again (the topic having been raised by Geoff in the June 2018 issue of Family Tree, on the Q&A pages). He wrote regarding his brickwall, which he was hoping it might be possible to solve thanks to an unusual first name in his family.
Geoff writes:
I first encountered the name Hercules as the middle name of my 3x greatgrandfather who was christened John Hercules Manning in 1778. I then found that his father and grandfather each had Hercules as their only Christian name. The latter, who died in 1780 aged 79, is causing me a bit of trouble as I am unable to get back past him with any certainty.
They all lived in or around East Wickham in Kent but there are no records available for the church there before about 1715. At that time, though, there were a number of Mannings in Somerset including a Hercules baptised in 1678 with three brothers baptised in the same decade: their father’s name was also Hercules.
Unfortunately, records for this area around 1700 also appear not to exist but it is a possibility that one of those four men could well have married and given a son their father’s name around 1700.
