Yes, I know that he took over his whole name, Lock, Stock, and Ford from his adoptive father (so he could still be Junior), but I’ve never heard of a case of someone completely changing all parts of his or her name upon their parent’s remarrying. Why wasn’t he Leslie Lynch Ford? Or Gerald Lynch Ford, or whatever? Are there anty other famous cases like this? (And things like Creighton Chaney becoming Lon Chaney, Jr. don’t count – he just changed his first name, not a triple-barreled first, middle, and last)
William Jefferson Blythe had alomst the exact same scenerio - except the junior part - taking his adoptive Dad’s name when his biological Dad died in a car wreck before he was born - he became William Jefferson Clinton and President of the United States
Same family situation, but 'taint the same thing at all. He was still William Jefferson, without changing the first or middle names.
Forgive my pickiness, but Junior did not change his name - his mother and step-father changed it.
It’s not unusual for a child’s surname to be changed to that of its adoptive father, though I can’t think of any “famous” cases besides Bill Clinton, already cited.
Come to think of it, this happened with one of my wife’s half-sisters.
If Leslie Lynch King, Sr. was a scoundrel, one can hardly blame Dorothy Ayer Gardner Lynch Ford for changing her son’s name.
According to several bios, Ford was never legally adopted by his stepfather. His mother married his biological father shortly after his birth, but left him within a couple of weeks and got a divorce and sole custody. When she married the elder Ford, several years later, she simply started calling her son G.R. Ford, jr. The son, legally changed his name in 1935. I would guess that there was some animosity between Ford’s mother and his biological father, so she simply decided she didn’t want her son to carry any part of his name.
BTW, there is some question about whether William Blythe was Clinton’s bio dad, as Clinton was born eight months after Blythe returned from the War. No question he was Clinton’s legal father, and possibly he was the bio dad. But maybe not. (I don’t care one way or another–just throwing that out.)
Guess I need to disown the first sentence in my post above since A.R. Cane sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. I was under the impression that it happened the way I had it, but I appear to be wrong.
Probably wrong about A.R. Cane’s gender, too. . . .
Probably wrong about A.R. Cane’s gender, too. . . .
Nope, you got that part right.
Under the circumstances, I don’t think it’s very significant the the senior Ford didn’t go through legal adoption proceedings. He was obviously a very good father and there could have been many personal reasons for not doing so. That the son chose to legally change his name, as an adult, would seem to confirm this.
Earl Snake-Hips Tucker writes:
> BTW, there is some question about whether William Blythe was Clinton’s bio
> dad, as Clinton was born eight months after Blythe returned from the War. No
> question he was Clinton’s legal father, and possibly he was the bio dad. But
> maybe not. (I don’t care one way or another–just throwing that out.)
For what it’s worth, the biography First in His Class by David Maraniss says that Clinton could have been conceived as early as December 10, 1945 when William Blythe first got back to his wife in the U.S. That would mean that Clinton was born after eight months and nine days of pregnancy on August 19, 1946. Virginia Clinton says that she had a fall late in the pregnancy and the birth was induced because the doctor was concerned about her condition. This doesn’t prove anything, of course.
He didn’t become an adoptive “Junior,” but he was born Clinton was born W.J. Blythe III.
All reports I’ve read say that he was a major scoundrel - an abusive alcoholic, and maybe worse.
I have absolutely no idea if this was the case for Mrs. Ford, but I’ve never pushed for legal adoption of my son by my husband because the bio-dad is bad rubbish I good riddanced years ago. It’s not worth the headache and drama he’d bring back into our lives in the 5 minutes it’d take me to get him to sign the permission papers. There’s no doubt at all in my mind who my son’s father is, I just didn’t meet him until our son was 5.
I know of at least one real-life (IE: non-famous) example of this very thing. In the mid '60s my mother had a close friend who was a single mother with 3 kids. The youngest girl was my age; there was also a boy a year or two younger, and an older girl. The mother remarried when her daughter and I were around 6 or 7. The 2 girls had their last names changed to reflect that of their new stepfather and the little boy’s name was changed completely – to William Middlename Lastname, Jr. I can no longer remember the boy’s original name, but I remember when it changed and it seeming odd to call him “Will” instead of whatever we had called him before.
I don’t know whether or not this was a legal adoption – although we knew the family for years, that wasn’t the sort of question I would have thought to ask. We fell out of touch when my dad retired from the Navy and we moved to Northern California. My brother ran into the youngest girl a couple of years ago and her brother was still using the stepfather’s name, although her mother and stepfather had been divorced for years.
My cousin’s bio dad was a scoundrel, so my aunt changed my cousin’s middle and last name when she remarried. Ironically, the new stepdad’s first name was the same as her son’s, so they left it.
No trace of dad left. Probably a good thing.
I assume Mrs. Ford felt similarly.
According to this genealogy, his parents married 10 months before he was born.
Leslie King, Jr. legally changed his name to Gerald R. Ford, Jr. when he was 22. Leslie King, Sr. died when his first-born son was 27.
From CNN:
I stand corrected, so they were actually married for a year and a half, but she left after 10 months. What little info. is available seems to indicate that King had little interest in the boy or his mother. It’s intersting to speculate how history might have been changed if Ford’s mother hadn’t had the courage to leave. This was 1913 and things like that must have been very rare.
Then of course, for Ford’s stepfather to marry a divorced woman w/ a child would also have been unusual in that era.
The mother of one of my classmates died when she was very little, shortly after the younger sister’s birth. Their father remarried a couple years later.
Their mother never adopted them because she and the father didn’t want to cause strife with the original mother’s family. On the day my classmate turned 18, she went to the judge and had her second lastname (maternal) changed, to match her mother’s. Her younger sister, then 16, said she intended to do the same.
I’m using “mother” and “original mother” rather than “stepmother” and “biological mother” because that’s how my friends refer to their moms.
A. R. Cane writes:
> Then of course, for Ford’s stepfather to marry a divorced woman w/ a child
> would also have been unusual in that era.
I suspect not. First, it was more common for relatively young people to be widowed, so second marriages with the new father or mother accepting a young child from the first marriage was also common. Divorce was more common than you think. Having a stepfather or stepmother was thus fairly common, and I don’t think they made a big difference between divorced women and widowed ones.
[a personal hijack]
You may want to reconsider this. What if you die? Your husband has no legal standing and may not retain custody of the child. What about medical decisions and treatment? Again, your husband may need the authority to make decisions and there may not be time to find the bio dad and get the necessary proceedings done. What about inheritences? Do your inlaws wish for your child to receive a portion of their estate on an equal footing with their other grandchildren? This may be easier done if the child were legally adopted. Of course, there are other ways to resolve these issues, but adoption is a sure-fire, iron-clad solution that fits all occassions.
Personally, I have done this. My daughter is actually my wife’s child from a previous marriage. I adopted her when she was around 8 years old (and had been in her life since she was two).
The drama and headache may well be worth it in the long run.
[end hijack. Thank you for your understanding.]
In a nice documentary on Gerald Ford shown on PBS/NC last night after the funeral service re-broadcast; details were that President Ford’s bio- Dad was a bad-tempered jerk, and, shortly after Leslie/Gerald’s birth, threatened to kill both mother and child with a butcher knife… Ford’s mother consulted with a lawyer, who told her to get out pronto, and she moved to Grand Rapids, where she met Gerald Ford, Sr., a decent guy who then raised her son, and their susbsequent children.
As said before here, a matter of the child taking the name of a better man. If your dad threatened you at knifepoint, well, yep, no need to keep honing that name.
It’s quite interesting, though, that in the case of both Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton; they had less than stellar entry into the world, by their daddies, yet, they both became quite accomplished men. And, were very devoted to their strong mothers, who pulled them up and through bad circumstance. And, were the two Presidents who have also had the strongest wives in the White House, who spoke up and have been controversial in their outspoken tendencies. The best sort of American Mom’s boys.
These are all good things to consider, and we did, in consultation with a lawyer. Most of them we addressed by things like my will (which could be contested, but it’d be hard for a deadbeat to do so) and other written documentation of my authorization and wishes. For example, my husband carries a written letter of permission to authorize medical care in my absence. It’ll work until I can get to the hospital. (A similar letter had worked for two different grandparents who were babysitting when an ER trip was needed.)
The two of them (husband and kid) have pretty much decided to leave things as they are for 4 more years, until WhyKid is 18 and can be adopted without anyone’s permission.