I missed the wonderful sea breeze blowing into my room and the lovely sounds of the waves rolling onto the beach. After 10 nights beautiful sunrises in Cancun, this morning I woke early to a view from my room of a dark and sub-zero Chicago. I suppose it was this dramatic change that caused me to wake earlier than usual. But this had one advantage, because while using the time to surf the Internet, I came across the most fascinating classified advertisments placed in the 4th January 1946 edition of The London Gazette.
This is a rather curious publication that has been going for a long, long time, and was commonly used by lawyers to publish announcements that were legally required to be made public. I actually found two concurant and related announcements http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/37420/supplements/259 :
This is a rather curious publication that has been going for a long, long time, and was commonly used by lawyers to publish announcements that were legally required to be made public. I actually found two concurant and related announcements http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/37420/supplements/259 :
NOTICE is hereby given that by a deed poll dated
±he 27th day of December 1945 and duly enrolled in
the Supreme Court of Judicature on *the ist day of
January 1946, GERALD WOOTLIFF of 19, Wellhouse
Drive, Gledhow in the city of Leeds Dental
Student a natural born British subject renounced and
abandoned the surname of Waissblatt and assumed
in lieu thereof the surname of Wootliff—Dated the
ist day of January 1946.
HEPWORTH and CHADWICK, 14, Butts
Court, Albion Street, in the City of Leeds,
(130) .Solicitors for the said Gerald Wootliff.
NOTICE is hereby given that by a deed poll dated,
the 27th day of December 1945 and duly enrolled
in. the Supreme Court of Judicature on the ist day
of January 1946, JOSEPH LENARD WOOTLIFF
of 19, Wellhouse Drive, Gledhow in the city of Leeds,
"Tailor, and Costumier, a naturalized British subject,
-renounced and abandoned the surname of Waissblatt
and assumed in lieu thereof the surname of Wootliff.
—Dated the 1st day of January 1946.
HEPWORTH and CHADWICK, 14, Butts
Court, Albion Street, in the City of Leeds,
{129) Solicitors for the said Joseph Lenard Wootliff.My father had once told me that when he applied for the Royal Airforce, he had disovered that he had officially been born with the original name that the Wootliff family had brought to Britain from Poland. I known this name to be Weisblatt, because of a branch of the family who had emigrated to the United States and retained the name, with this particular spelling. But I do remember seeing the Waissblatt name on grave stones at my step-grandmother Rose's funeral, which must have been over 20 years ago.
It was quite common for Jews who immigrated to Britain to so-called 'anglicize' their names, so as to avoid the embarrassment of being known as a foriegner, and perhaps even as a Jew. Weisblatt means White Leaf, and so your ancestors who arrived in Britain in the late eighteen hundreds decided to change the family name to Wootliff. This was a particularly Yorkshire-sounding name, which was very fitting for a family that landed in the coastal town of Hull, where my father was to be born in 1923.
For some wierd reason, my father's father, Leonard, your great, great grandfather, had been born with the name of Waissblatt, which I assume was because his parents never got around to officially changing their surname. As a result, my father was also officially born with the name of Gerald Waissblatt, although he was brought up as a Wootliff and had this name throughout his childhood, teens and early twenties. These two announcements give notice of the fact that both Leonard and his son Gerald changed their name by deed poll, which is the legal term.
But what I still don't understand is that, according to these announcements, the change would have been when my father was already 24 years old. This would have been after his service in the Royal Airforce. So my question is why did my father officially change his name at this particular time?
Family history is interesting and important. Unfortunately, it is easy to leave many questions unanswered. By the time you get around to asking someone, people who would know are no longer alive. Alas, this may be the case as for my father's name-change. But I will ask my Aunt Barbara, my father's sister, and see whether she can shed any light on this family mystery.
Meanwhile, my dear Yael, I advise you to check your own birth certificate to find out whether your parents may have entered any information which now seems strange to you.
Grandpa Jonathan
Chicago, USA
