Lesley,LesleyB wrote:A couple of thougths, but I'm sure you will have thought about these before:
Firstly, it seems possible that his surname is going to turn up as Dalton and/or D'Alton - I wonder if his branch of the family, or he himself decided that D'Alton looked a bit more distinctive for his profession?
Secondly, although the children's names do contain some Scots references such as Gordon, Stuart & Mackie, Horace & Cyril are very atylpical of Scots names! But if they lived in England, as they did, there was a tendancy to give the children names which fitted with the location - I have Scots families who go south and the naming patterns change with fashionable names being used instead of the family names.
And - Is it possible that he later added his middle name perhaps? I mention this because I spent a long time trying to find the birth of a man around 1892, and it only transpired after much effort, cost and frustration, after two years concentrated searching that the blighter had clearly not thought his given name quite dashing enough, and on every piece of documentation I had- his marriage, his death, electoral rolls etc, he had lengthened his first name and added a distinctive middle name. Searching for his birth under this name resulted in zero results of course!! (Until I got wise to him!)
What I'm trying to say, I think, is we may find we are searching for a plain old Walter Dalton.
Or, and I'm being devil's advocate here....what if his parents were not married at the time of his birth? He may even be using a surname with which he was not registered....
Best wishes
Lesley
We agree that ALL of your thoughts may be possible and have over more than thirty years, tried looking for variations of his name without any definite leads. There have been some plain Walter Dalton/Thomas Dalton of similar ages but have disproved these due to later marriages/census's.
Likewise, we have tried looking for all Walters of similar age (i.e. assuming mother not married) born in Scotland , but without success.
As there are 'D'Alton's in Ireland, we have also wondered if one was passing by in 1861 ?
Al & Al