I have told parts of this story elsewhere, but this is the first time I have presented it with photographic evidence.
Many of my readers have urged me to write a prequel to my earlier post about my imprisonment. Now that the days have begun to turn colder and shorter, I will have more time time catch up on my writing, so I will provide some of the backstory.
Meanwhile, a bit of lighter fare
I suppose that, like me, every young child wonders about their name.
My mother was good at explaining things to me, so I learned about the naming practices of my family from her. I also observed how people around me addressed each other.
As I grew up and became more worldly wise, I came to understand that naming practices vary widely among cultures. The European Colonial system used by my family was not the way things worked for everyone.
I’ll start with my Last Name
Long before I learned to read or write, it was clear to me that Wilcox was my family name. My parents and my siblings had the same last name as I did.
My mother, who seemed to be in charge of naming pets, children, and other things (or at least informing me of what they were called), explained to me why one set of my grandparents had a different surname. She used the affectionate forms of address for my grandparents of “Grammy” and “Grampy.”
I now think of my Grandmother Wilcox as Grace Josephine Bidwell Wilcox, but in my youth I called her Grammy Wilcox. I was probably about 8 years old when she explained to me the notion that English surnames mostly came from a person’s occupation. At that time, I took for granted that family names were passed along on the male side.
In the records of the Connecticut Colony, where my first American ancestors resided, the name was sometimes spelled Willcocks, and Grammy Wilcox speculated it might have derived from a man named Will who raised fowl for a living.
I have recently come across a more likely explanation. The following quotation is from a response to a Facebook post I made. I have no expertise in this area, so I cannot confirm its accuracy. Given the three possible explanations, I favor the first one.
Wilcox is derived from the name William and the Anglo-Saxon "cocc" meaning 'little' in the sense of a term of endearment. It was often used at the end of a chieftain's name. So, "Little William".
It could also be derived from a word meaning a mound, small hill, heap. "Haycock" is an example.
Lastly, another possibility is from the Welsh "coch" (ch like German) meaning one with red hair.
My Middle Name
Forbes was my mother’s family name. Her father (my Grampy Forbes) was Stewart Archibald Forbes, born in Edinburgh, and Scottish through and through. He was orphaned at an early age and came to live with relatives on Prince Edward Island.
My mother’s mother was Jennie Morris, a Canadian of Scottish descent. Stewart and Jennie emigrated to the United States and were married in Waltham Massachusetts. He was a caretaker and she worked for the Waltham Watch Company, assembling watches. I still have the watch she gave him on their wedding day.
My mother was born in Fitchburg (where her father had found employment), on April 25, 1915, and was named Annie Ellen Jennie Forbes.
Late in her life, my mother told me that her only regret was that she did not have six children. She gave it a good try, and ended up with five. In naming her children, she relied on her mother-in-law (my Grammy Wilcox, the town historian) for suggestions of names from the family genealogy, and followed the Wilcox and Bidwell tradition of using surnames from earlier generations as middle names for offspring.
I was privileged to receive as my middle name a connection with my mother’s side of the family, and I often use all three of my names to honor my descent from both (and perhaps to give a bit of a snub to the patriarchy).
My two brothers also received family surnames as their middle names. Richard Bidwell was named after his granduncle, Grammy Wilcox’s brother (Richard Souder Bidwell). Bruce Davies took his middle name from his father’s and grandfather’s middle names, which came from Wales as the surname of Grampy Wilcox’s mother. Bruce Cassidy had been a wartime buddy of our father’s.
My mother refused to give her daughters middle names. “They will have middle names when they get married,” she told me, and she confided that she hated having so many names: Annie Ellen Jennie Forbes Wilcox. In those days, it was assumed that a wife would tag on her husband’s surname to her own, a practice that was almost universally followed in this country. She would also lose the use of her given name. Although my grandmother had a career of her own, and was an equal breadwinner in the household, she was known as Mrs. Graham D. Wilcox, Sr., as if she did not have her own name.
I was told that my sister Terry’s name was chosen by her father (perhaps she knows more of the story) and that Sarah came from many Sarahs in the Wilcox and Bidwell past. In fact, one of them was a Sarah Wilcox who married John Bidwell in Hartford around 1640. Their great-grandson, Reverend Adonijah Bidwell, was the first Bidwell to come to what is now Berkshire County, in 1750.
My First Name
Michael was the most common boy’s name in this country for many, many years. When I was growing up, it seemed I was never the only Michael in my class, on a team, or in any other group I belonged to.
Before I became aware of that, when I was quite young, I asked my mother why she had chosen Michael as my name. She told me she had named me after her favorite dog. I thought that was really cool. I didn’t know anyone else who was named after a pet. We always had lots of pets in our household; cats, dogs, fish, Guinea pigs, turtles, you name it. I loved them all. That was a big part of why I became a vegetarian (more than 60 years ago now) — I did not like the idea that I was eating animals that could have been my pets.
Several years after I learned of the origin of my name, a friend was visiting for lunch at our house on South Lee Road; I was probably around 14 years old. The conversation turned to names, and my friend asked me why I was named Michael. I proudly told him that I was named for a dog. “Who told you that?” my mother asked, acting surprised. “You did,” I said, “you told me I was named after your favorite dog.”
“No, I never had a dog named Michael”
“Then why did you call me that?”
“I just liked the name.”
Well, I was quite deflated. And also confused. I had a very clear memory of her telling me about her dog.
Many years went by, and, in her 60’s, my mother began to go blind because of her diabetes. Eventually, she had no use for all the family pictures and scrapbooks that she had saved, so she asked my brother Rick to take them all and give them to whichever of her children would get the most enjoyment from them. I received my share, and glanced through them.
One picture stopped me in my tracks. There it was. A picture of my mother and a dog, and the picture was labeled “Annie Michael ‘43” — so she did have a dog named Michael!
I lost track of that photo for a long time, and recently came across it again, so I thought I would share it, along with the explanation just given.