Wells

June 22, 2023 – Kendal, Cumbria, UK

Bear and I will spend our first night in England in the heart of Cumbria, at Kendal. Our seventh great Grandfather, Christopher Phillipson was born here, in 1677.

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“Phillipson?” you say, “I thought your mother’s family name was “Wells”.

It is, and it isn’t. 

British naming tradition follows paternal lines.  Children take the surname of their fathers, who pass the name on to their children.  When a man and woman marry, the woman traditionally changes her name to the husband’s and her name is discontinued in the family lineage.  

These paternal naming traditions sometimes make tracing ancestry a tricky business, especially when the family’s history is populated by strong-minded, independent women, like ours.

The Wells side of our family is enormously proud of the name.  The clan has endured for five generations since our earliest Wells ancestors arrived in Canada in 1906. There is a wonderful Wells History Book, lovingly compiled several years ago.  Just last year, we held a reunion where 80+ members of the Wells family gathered in Swift Current to celebrate our unity.

All this, despite the fact that there is not a single drop of Wells blood in our veins.

Our patriarch, Robert Wells was born out of wedlock to Agnes Phillipson in 1887.  Agnes married John Wells when Robert was 2 years, 1 month old.  We don’t know if Robert was officially adopted by John Wells (and it really doesn’t matter) but Robert was a Phillipson when he came into this world.  There is no record of who the biological father was.

None of this matters in the grand scheme of things.  Our family, like most, has a complex weave of origins.  My last name is Paton, but I am a Wells, a Phillipson, a Fallows, a Bekker, a Brockbank, and a Whistler, the women who gave up their names when they married into the family.

Family has very little to do with bloodlines. We are, and will forever be, …

… Wells.

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