Gertrude Surprise Macbeth: 52 Ancestors Week No. 6 "Surprise"

Gertrude E Surprise Macbeth

September 20, 1891-March 10, 1959

About a year ago, I called my mother to ask a quick question about one of her paternal aunts. “Mom, why in the world did your grandparents give your Aunt Gertie the middle name ‘Surprise’?” I laughed. I expected to hear a funny family story—like they were surprised she was a girl, or that she arrived before her due date and took them by surprise. Instead, my mother was shocked. “That can’t be right,” she kept saying. “I never heard that before.”

Gertrude Macbeth was born September 20, 1891 to Walter Macbeth and his 19-year-old wife of eighteen months, Lucy May Dane Macbeth. Gertrude, or Gertie as she was known to her siblings, was the oldest of six children (the fifth child was my grandfather Ivan Macbeth).

According to Ancestry’s transcriptions of both Gertrude’s birth record and baptism record, she was named Gertrude Surprise Macbeth or Gertie Surprise Macbeth.

No other records I have found include this middle name or the middle initial “s”. Gertrude apparently used the middle initial “E” on most official documents once she was an adult, but I have yet to discover what the “E” stood for. 

photo fr. lavoiser1

Gertrude married James Laird on June 1, 1905. Like her mother, she was an eighteen-year-old bride. She and James, a farmer and sometimes teamster, had eleven children over a twenty year period. They spent their lives in Blue Earth County, Minnesota, and Gertie died on March 10, 1959 at age 67. Her headstone reads “Gertrude E Laird”. 

Photo from lavoiser1

I can speculate that her middle name was mis-transcribed before the data was uploaded to Ancestry—that the person who wrote the original certificates had poor handwriting, and some name beginning with the letter “e” was misinterpreted as “surprise”. It rather stretches credulity that two separate records could produce the same error, but anything is possible.

I will have to order a copy of the actual birth record from Minnesota to settle the question once and for all, even though I love the name “Gertrude Surprise” and long to just leave it that way in the family tree.

I hope that Gertrude will surprise me yet again. Perhaps the actual birth records will clearly read “Gerturde Surprise Macbeth” and my speculation over her parents’ intent and meaning can continue.