In any family tree research, surprises can await at any turn of the genealogical research process. This week one of our genealogists was researching an Evans family in Wales and Somerset. They were relatively mobile, but nothing out of the ordinary.
But the 1871 census showed that the parents John and Eliza Evans had named their daughter "Boadicia". What prompted them to give their daughter the name of this historic Celtic warrior? Whatever it was, it certainly makes genealogical research more straightforward when dealing with such a rare forename.
In fact, searches of birth records of General Registration reveal that there were 120 children given this forename, from 1837 to 1915. Spellings vary, including Boadicia and Boadicea, but the Queen of the Iceni from the 1st century AD has clearly been remembered in our ancestors' naming patterns of the nineteenth century.
