What's In and Between a Name - Mystery of a family event in 1906.
Updated: Oct 3
The surname 'Lemon' is not especially rare, but it is uncommon enough to make genealogy travels very interesting - several heroes and villains alike - who were all probably cousins at some point on a timeline of Lemons, Lemans, Lemmons and similar variations going back a few hundred years. The name 'Kent-Lemon' however is very rare - though that is not surprising when you realize it is only 120 years old this year. It is debatable whether this 'birth' of a new branch name is a few years either side of 1906, but I suggest it can be pinpointed to December 29th almost on the eve of 1907. It seems likely that the Lemon family held a post-Christmas gathering on that date, perhaps lunch, maybe dinner.
The family often attended fancy dress social occasions so - purely for my own amusement - I wish to imagine them arriving on a cold winter evening dressed as various historical and cultural icons. (Within the family archive I have a few images of such occasions from that same decade in and around London).
The venue remains to be identified but this Lemon family get-together included all of William George and Selina Lemon's children, their spouses and 3 of the 4 grandchildren. (The youngest, my grandfather Hugh was only 7 so may have not been present). For some special reason the family commemorated the occasion by creating a set of silverware pieces with each family name inscribed. The pieces included at least 4 ink wells and one sugar bowl. The latter suggests that an entire tea service may have been engraved and the 'collection' shared out between the 11 attendees. My own family ended up with 3 identical silver inkwells, one since lost to a burglary. Cousin Tony has the sugar bowl. Eleven names are inscribed on each item using an italicized but faux signature. Reading from the base of my own inkwell, starting clockwise from the event date of 29 December 1906, the names are:
W Kent Lemon
Annie S Lemon
Noel Kent Lemon
Arthur Henry Lemon
M.L. Lemon
Leslie Kent Lemon
Esther E. Lemon
Frank Edward Lemon
Queenie Kent Lemon
Helen Kent Lemon
Grace Lemon
The question is - what was special about the occasion such that it warranted an expensive family gift to itself? Was the money pooled or did one member pay? And why? Apart from the opening of the Piccadilly line in London and the commissioning of the first Dreadnought battleship, the month of December 1906 has no earthshattering milestones that British families would have wished to mark together. There were no royal events either, and I have not yet identified a significant family member milestone in that year.
One point that was unusual about this particular Christmas season was that Arthur Henry and wife Grace were home in England after several years overseas. Arthur's career had been entirely based in Singapore and Malaya since 1888 with only occasional months of leave home. He didn't maintain a house in England because his visits were so infrequent. One reason he seems to have been back in England was to be called to the Bar, as had his two brothers previously. Perhaps 1906 was the first time he and Grace had brought their only son Hugh back with them. Perhaps Hugh was being brought 'home' to begin his schooling in England, and the event was held especially for him. This might explain why his name was not on the engravings, as suggested by my cousin Wendy Ray. This seems a bit doubtful - there ought to have been an inscription to that effect. Perhaps all three brothers felt that sharing the legal "Esquire" of a barrister like their eminent father was an achievement worth celebrating. 1907 was to be the 10th anniversary of William George Lemon's death.
Another idea is that the December event may commemorate a family pact to make a naming distinction between the three new family branches. In his 2005 book 'A History of the Lemon, Kent-Lemon and Pembroke Families' my cousin David Kent-Lemon, explores how, when and why, within the Blackheath Lemon family of 5 siblings, one part of the family decided to formally signal their use of a variant surname. Oldest sibling William had been given the middle name 'Kent' by his parents William George Lemon (1830-1897) and Selina Kent (1821-1900).
Step One (or so it appears retrospectively) was for all of William Kent's family to also include the name 'Kent' within their own names. This I suggest was 'officially' agreed within the wider family on December 29th, 1906, as well as just being a seasonal occasion to no doubt enjoy a good feast together as kin and exchange Christmas presents. The three 'Kent' children were only about 17,16 and 10 at the time so deciding a new name for the next generation was not something they would have been involved in. The 'pact' added some extra work for the silverware engraver but clearly the whole family was happy to make a distinction between their branches. The weakness in my argument (that the silverware was intended to memorialize an 'announcement') is the lack of consistency in the way the names are written - some using initials, one with a pet name, two with first names missing entirely. In some sense, sloppy editing! So perhaps the meaningful and emotionally laden distribution of silverware that I perceive was not such a 'big deal' and quite a casual gesture among three now very well-off siblings. I do hope not.
Step Two was for the Kent Lemons to adopt the hyphenation which my cousin David concludes to have been around 1912 and related to Arthur Leslie KL (then 21) and his official army registration. Father WKL must have agreed to this as it seems he notified the school where Leslie' brother Noel had been boarding since 1910. When Noel left in 1914, he was officially 'Noel Kent-Lemon'.
It will also be noted that among the names on the inkwell stand above, Noel Kent Lemon was presented without his birth name Edward. Similarly, Arthur Leslie Lemon was inscribed as "Leslie Kent Lemon" possibly as a further in-family distinction between him and his colonial-service uncle Arthur. According to a will bequest from grandfather WGL, Leslie Kent-Lemon was also "more commonly called Tom". So, pet-names were also thrown into the mix when the Kent grandchildren were young. 'Tom's' sister Clara was always known as "Queenie", a pet-name so well-embedded into family life that it became forever the name listed on the aforementioned silver heirloom.
As to reasons for creating a naming distinction, my cousin David suggests the possibility of some obligation to the Kent family of Abingdon through Grandmother Selina's inheritance or, more simply, that it was a personal preference to have a name sounding more distinguished. It makes sense that a successful Edwardian family in West Kent with rising social status (and aspirations to live in Ascot) would prefer the prestige of a double barrel. In the 18th century the practice of double barrels had originated as a practical legal mechanism to protect money and land. In the Victorian era it evolved into a symbol of social status and, eventually, modern equality. I don't think there was any request or expectation from the Abingdon Kents (Selina's mother or brother) to create a Kent-Lemon branch from some kind of financial obligation. As far as I am aware at the time of her marriage Selina did not bring some kind of 'dowry'. Her father had died a few years earlier but there was no inheritance to Selina. John Kent's will of 1843 left everything to his wife Ann, "the sole Executrix". (Ann died in 1857 aged 73 most likely leaving everything to Selina' brother John). The Kent family did not even use middle names among themselves. While the London Lemons, of the 1820s, 30s and 40s, were all christened with a middle name neither Selina nor her siblings received one.
William Kent Lemon (aka WKL) was undoubtedly given his middle name after his maternal family in Abingdon. Not only that, WKL had been born in Kent (West Kent) just a few months after his parents moved from Camden (Middlesex). He was their first child in their new life, and the first surviving child in their marriage. The very first child, Selina, had died of suspected cholera two years earlier, having been christened with the middle name Theodora, (not Kent). There was a custom in some non-conformist families to use a maternal surname as a middle name in the next generation. WKL's father William George Lemon, then a school master, had recently taught a pupil named Robert Moffat Livingston, son of David - the famous African missionary explorer - and his wife Mary Moffat. Several of the Livingston's 6 children had unusual middle names, all surnames from various dear friends. I think William George and Selina were borrowing from that missionary tradition.
The above explains the choice of the maternal surname 'Kent' entering the Lemon family, but not the choice for other family members to adopt Kent into their own names and add a double barrel. I would suggest the first reason for creating "Kent-Lemon' as a surname was simply to distinguish WKL from his locally famous father in public life. In a 1913 letter to the War Office found by my cousin David, Leslie Kent-Lemon wrote something to that effect:
"I have to state that my legal surname is Lemon but I have for some years used that of Kent-Lemon.." Leslie went on to explain that; "For the purposes of distinguishing his family from others of the same surname, my father [William Kent] has habitually discribed (sic) himself as Kent Lemon, his second christian name being the maiden name of his mother. As a family we are known under the double name.'
This must have been the case. During the 1870s William George Lemon (WGL) had become very well-known for his work with the Parish Vestry and Board of Works. His name was in brass above the new Town Hall door in Catford. Then, from 1889 he was known to all in the wider borough of Lewisham having been elected as their first-ever councilor for the newly created London County Council. In the 1880s and 90s both WKL and his father appeared in the local newspapers regularly, and sometimes attending the same event. They shared the first name William, so it became usual for WKL to be described as 'W. Kent Lemon', and sometimes simply 'Major Kent Lemon'. In the postal directory for Blackheath their names appeared together where, WKL was listed as "Lemon Wm Kent", distinct from "Lemon William Geo".
So, by 1912 the Kent-Lemons had begun to use the double-barrel in official registers. Notably, there was also another family named Lemon in Blackheath, originally from Liverpool - good cricketers but trades people (heaven forbid!). In the public mind Lemon was a rare name, "so both families must be kin" - that would have been the thinking. WKL was occasionally appearing on the civic and social news pages of the Kentish Mercury, the cricketing Lemons on the sports page. So, adopting 'Kent-Lemon' in public came naturally to a socially conscious Edwardian family during what was Britain's heady Gilded Age. When, in 1917, WKL and Helen moved to fashionable Ascot and a 16-bedroomed house near the racecourse their name would have mingled effortlessly with the other double barrels.
As imagined above, the entire Lemon tree of Blackheath, Kent may have drunk a toast to this new branch name on December 29th,1906, 120 years ago.
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