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[MargP]

I think that we need a Military expert on this, it may be worth posting on that Forum to see if they can find him in the 2nd West Riding Regiment, I am also wondering if he was on some sort of covert mission, and may have been the reason for the names change???

[topas37]

Don't know anything is possible but thanks again for all your help, my husband is trying to sift through all the information and make sense of it

[groom]

I think that we need a Military expert on this, it may be worth posting on that Forum to see if they can find him in the 2nd West Riding Regiment, I am also wondering if he was on some sort of covert mission, and may have been the reason for the names change???

He must have been very young then as the name change was before 1911 when he would have been 22. We have his army records as Matthew Hedges, but I cant find any army records as Alfred May, but we know that he was still in the army, possibly in Turkey, in 1923.

If you do put a query on the Military forum, don't forget to link it back to this thread so that people don't waste time looking up what we have already found.

[topas37]

Thank you going to put it on Military later when I get a minute not sure how to link it to this unless I just tell them what board etc the details are on

[groom]

Just copy and past from the bar at the top

http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,585485.0.html

[groom]

See also this thread

http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,585843.0.html

[Wendy111]

topas37 alerted me to this thread because it's my tree on Ancestry for Matthew Willm Hedges. Can't help with his later life - this change of name is news to me - but I know abt his parents.  His mother Helena Amelia Chatterton md Matthew  Hedges in 1888.
Helen aAmelia was 6mths pregnant with Matthew Willm when she md Matthew.  Two more children followed - Joseph Frek Hedges in 1890 and Willm Thom in 1892 before Matthew died in 1894 aged 26.
In 1896 she md Thomas Allen (the uncle of  her 1st husband Matthew Hedges) who brought up the three boys before he too died in 1902. There's a likely death for her in Wandsworth 1926 when her surname was still Allen, making it unlikely she married a 3rd time although she might have lived with someone. 
Of Matthew Willm's two siblings, Joseph Frederick died aged 2 in 1893. Willm Thomas was in the 1911 census with Helena Amelia and working as a Yard Clerk in Milwall Works.  She was widowed and working as a Charwoman.  I've nothing further on Matthew Willm after 1901.
 

[groom]

Hello Wendy and welcome to Rootschat, as you can see Matthew is a man of mystery. We seem to have established that he added the first name Alfred and the surname May at some point between joining the army in 1906 and 1911 when he appears on the census as Alfred May and his marriage in that year when he uses the full name of Alfred Matthew William Hedges May.

I suppose there is the possibility that Matthew Hedges (senior) was not the biological father of Matthew William Hedges and that he   did take his "real" father's name in later life for some reason. If that is the case I wonder why he added a new first name as well rather that just the surname.

Jan

[topas37]

Maybe if this is the case his biological father was called Alfred