52 ancestors Week 10 (Mar. 8-14): Name’s the Same – Ralph Clemett/Clement Harrison Ragg/Wragg

 Week 10 (Mar. 8-14): Name’s the Same – Ralph Clemett/Clement Harrison Ragg/Wragg

For this week’s theme of “names the same” my original idea was to do a graph showing how many people had the same name (eg James, John, Mary etc) but then I had a better idea. For it though I need to give you a bit of a background story so it makes sense.

Background: Many years ago; I came across an ancestor (my Great Grand Uncle) by the name of Clemett Harrison Wragge Lackey born 1909 in Durham England. It seemed a very unusual name and one that wasn’t linked to his father’s side of the family (the Lackey’s) and from what I could tell only part of his mothers – it wasn’t her name fully except the Wragge part as that was her maiden name (Edith Mary Wragge who was born 1872 in Sunderland). I guessed it was linked to his grandmother on the mother’s side, and again I hit a big blank no. So as it was I left it, guessing that the family had picked a random name for their son.

Move forward to 2020 and 2021 and us being in a lockdown situation, I started to spend more time looking into the family tree, puzzling names and trying to work on brick walls. The above name being in this list. I realised that Clemett’s mother (Edith Mary Wragge) was missing on a couple of census records, so I started looking for her more. 

I found that the lady who I had listed as Edith’s mother (Sarah Ann Cook) could NOT have been her mother but likely her step-mother as she was also not listed on earlier census as a Ragg/Wragge, nor with the Ragg/Wragge family. Back to Edith’s father – Dennis Ragg/Wragge (who was born 1840 Ouston, Durham, England.)  I went looking, and I managed to locate him on the missing census records with a variant of spelling to the surname. Also listed was his wife Margaret NOT Sarah! 

I soon found a marriage record for Dennis Ragg and Margaret Harrison. BINGO! I now have link to his 2middle names and where they are from. Still nothing on his 1st name though, so may be as I had thought just an unusual name or linked to the Grandmother (now i have the correct mother!) Margaret died when Edith was about 2years and Dennis re-married a few years later to Sarah Ann Cook.

On the 1871 census Dennis and Margaret are listed with their children (Edith’s siblings) and one of them is a Ralph C H Ragg. Cue me looking into him as my feeling was his initials were going to stand for Clemett/Clement Harrison; and yes they did.  SO, from here it looks like my Clemett Lackey was named after his uncle. It seemed the puzzle was solved, but not fully as I suspected the uncle was named after relatives with “names the same”.

From looking into this further I have found that Margaret’s father was a Ralph Clemett Harrison also and so was one of her brothers, who in turn named one of his sons Ralph Clemett Harrison, so it is a family name. Other of Margaret’s siblings used various versions of the name and used Clemett, Clement or Clemett Harrison as middle names.

After hours of looking at records linked to the Ragg/Wragge and Harrison lines I eventually found the missing piece of where my Great Grand uncle Clemett Lackey actually got his first name from. His 2nd great Grandmother was Mary Ann CLEMENT and as the name has been used for children as a middle name, it has become changed to Clemett. But this is possibly due to accents and transcriptions.


Where I thought my ancestor Clemett had an unusual name it turns out that it isn’t so unusual in his ancestors and many of them had “names the same”. In total I have:

  • 1X Clemett Harrison Wragge Lackey, 
  • 6X Ralph Clemett/Clement Harrison (with Harrison as surname), 
  • 2X Ralph Clemett Harrison and a surname  
  • 7X Clemett/Clement or Harrison as a middle name (only linked to this family, I’ve not included Harrison as middle name from other lines). 

There is also 4 others I’ve found on FreeBMD website with the Ralph Clement Harrison (and with a different surname) that I have not been able to link into the tree yet. BUT I think it maybe via ladies who have had more than one husband.


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