Who’s Your Daddy?

And who’s your mommy, too? Because clearly someone is confused.

Marriage Record of Forrest Richardson Eaton and Bridget Ida Basquil

From this record, it would appear that not only is Bridget’s middle name Ida (no, I don’t believe that for a minute), but that her parents were Michael Basquil and Mary McGuire. Also, all three of them were born in England. No. Way.

Compare, please, to Bridget’s entry over at Findagrave. Her middle initial there is A. For Agnes. You’ll see that she was born in Swinford, County Mayo, Ireland. Yes. Yes, she was. And her parents (also born in County Mayo, of course) were Thomas Basquil and Catherine Morely. You can see the whole happy family here, in the 1901 Census and the 1911 Census.

So what is going on with that marriage record? It’s clearly for this Bridget, as she did, indeed marry Mr. Eaton. We have no idea who provided the information for the marriage record or whether it was vetted by Bridget. We don’t even know when it was actually created or by whom. If there were no other information on this couple available, you’d have to go with the marriage record, but stacked up against all the other facts we do have, I think we can assume that either the informant was wrong, wrong, wrong, wrongity, wrong, wrong, WRONG, or that two records were conflated after the fact. Perhaps Michael [some other last name that is not Basquil] and Mary McGuire belong to the bride or groom of the previous or next marriage record the clerk filled out?

And where did that “Ida” come from? The name is not at all common in County Mayo. Searching the 1901 Census, there are 11 Idas in the county (counting it as a first name as well as in combination with all other first names; never once does it occur with Bridget), compared with 21 Bridget Agneses. And there is just one Bridget Ida in the entire country, in County Antrim. Nationwide, there are 151 Bridget Agneses. There’s just no reason to believe that our Bridget Basquil ever used the middle name Ida. Perhaps the mysterious Michael [some other last name that is not Basquil] and Mary McGuire had a daughter named Bridget Ida [some other last name that is not Basquil]?