|
My paternal grandmother was a Trotter and was referred to as Granny Lybbe as that
was who she had married. Her mother was a Gillett and for a similar reason
referred to as Granny Trotter as her hushand was Canon Henry Eden Trotter. But
Henry had not been born a Trotter but a Brown and only adopted the Trotter name
when he was 22. The occasion was when the senior line of real Trotters all died
out and their estates came to the daughter, Mary Welbank, of a Trotter daughter
who had died over fifty years previously, probably in or soon after childbirth.
The reason for this name change was that the last male Trotter of this line had left a will to say that his great-niece's husband could have the estates if he changed his name and arms to those of Trotter, which, not unnaturally, he promptly did, in 1868. My great grandfather Henry Trotter was the fourth son of twelve children, only four of whom married. And while but one of Henry's elder brothers married and had children, those children did not. Then Henry had six children and only one of these, a daughter, married and had children, though she did not take to that state; of her two children only one married and had children and we are his offspring. Curiously this tale of weak genetics is complemented by young Trotter sons of Mary Welbank who have Trotter issue to this day. Anyhow the Trotters give us a large Scottish ancestry which has been fun to document and explore.
|
