The Mystery of a Tytus Name Change

This blog has had several comments on the Davies house (original post here) and about the Charlotte Davies Tytus information (here) in the past 6 months or so.  These posts were written a number of years ago, and Judy and I moved on to working on other questions.  The recent interest, however, has renewed my interest in the Davies and Tytus families and in particular, my interest in Robb dePeyster Tytus.

Charlotte M. Davies married Edward J. Tytus in 1874.  They traveled to Europe in mid-1875, on what was likely their honeymoon trip, but while they were traveling Edward  was told that his lungs were in bad shape and that he should return to the United States for medical care.  They returned in late 1875 and went to North Carolina for the winter.  Here, in Asheville, their only child Robert Davies Tytus was born in February 1876.  When his father Edward died in 1881 and his will was probated, this son was named as Robert Davis Tytus.  However, by the time he went to Yale, and likely before that, he was named Robb dePeyster Tytus.

So where and when and why did this son’s name get changed to Robb dePeyster Tytus?  So far we have been able to find no direct evidence of the change.  However, his obituary record in the Yale Obituary Record for 1913-1914 reported that his name was changed by legislative act in his ninth year¹.  Likewise, an article about Charlotte Tytus published in 2006 also reported ² that his name was changed legally, in 1885, when he was nine years old and his father had been dead for four years.  This article acknowledged not knowing why the name was changed, although the author did speculate at the end of the article that his change of name could have been for an inheritance – again without any evidence that this was the case.  However, at least one of the obituaries for Robb (the one published by Yale) noted that he was a member of the “wealthy New York” dePeyster family.

In trying to discover a record showing the change of name, I first went looking in North Carolina sites (since that is where he was born) for what the laws and procedures of the time period were.  I saw nothing in the Private Laws for 1885-1887 in North Carolina.  My next thought had been that such a change would have happened in Connecticut where Robb and his mother Charlotte were living from at least 1884 on (when not traveling abroad).  So genealogygal Judy communicated with the Connecticut State Library and their Genealogy and History section.  The State Library has indexes of special acts of the Legislature from about 1800-1943 (he did not show up) and indexes of the General Assembly private laws covering 1874-1884  (in which he did not appear either).  I do not know what the distinction between special acts of the Legislature and private laws by the General Assembly is, if anything.  In addition, it isn’t clear to me whether the General Assembly stopped making private laws or whether the State Library just doesn’t have an index for anything past 1884.  A few days later, the History and Genealogy Librarian responded that the Superior Court usually handled such matters in Connecticut and he had looked through 3 boxes that covered files from 1883-1888 and No Appearance/discontinued  files from 1875-1889.  Likewise there was no glimpse of Robb/Robert Tytus in the files.

So these negative findings leave me thinking of a couple of directions to go in looking for the name change.  The first is looking to find out if the Connecticut General Assembly continued to make private laws after 1884.  The second may be to find out if the History and Genealogy section has access to additional materials that show what the General Assembly rather than the Superior Court was doing in the time period.  Then, pending nothing in the state of Connecticut, I think New York state is the next best bet.  Particularly if there was a question of being a legatee of a New York will, the name change might have been in that state.  My plan for the future includes trying to answer these questions.  In addition I have started looking into Robb’s education, starting with St. Mark’s School in Massachusetts where he prepared for college.  That will be the next post.