Our Dugay Connection

Our Dad's grandmother was Kate Agnes Dugay. Dugay is an uncommon name in Great Britain; so uncommon in fact that all Dugays born in Great Britain since 1787 are descended from a single marriage; William Dugey and Mary Inglefield married in that year.  Without that marriage the name would have become extinct in Great Britain. In the census of 1841 there are only 16 people in the country with the surname Dugay, and variations.

Which raises another point - different spellings of the name - we have come across Dugay, Du Gay, Dugoe, Dugo, Deugoe, Duggay, Duggey, Dugy.

So how did the name develop? We need to keep in mind that the name Dugay is quite widespread in France and Canada, much more so than in Great Britain. Did the name in this country originate from French immigrants of that name? Quite possibly but it would have to have been before about 1600, because we have traced a direct line back to our ancestors at around that date.

The earliest ancestors of our Dugay family are four brothers with the name Dugoe living in the Amport area in around 1600.

• Salathiel Dugoe died in Appleshaw in 1637. In his will he names his three brothers. Salathiel is our 8xGreat Grandfather.

• Thomas Dugoe was born in 1591 and died in Ludgershall in 1668 aged 77. He was a gamekeeper.

• John Dugoe died in 1675 in Collingbourne Kingston. North of Ludgershall.

• Edward Dugoe died in Shipton Bellinger in 1641.

In Amport in 1684 we find the baptism of our 6xGreat Grandfather John Dugoe. John died in 1770 and we have a copy of his will from Hampshire Archives in Winchester. Hampshire Archives have indexed the will under both spellings of his name, Dugoe and Dugey. This is significant because these two variations of the name would appear to be pronounced differently, but this will establishes a link between the two names. But it's not clear why the will was indexed under both names - Hampshire Archives couldn't shed any light on why. Perhaps he was known under both names. So the Dugoe/Dugay link is tenuous and the research continues. We keep an open mind on the possibility of a connection to France.

The will of John Dugoe seems to be the last recorded occurrence of the Dugoe name. 

This diagram shows the line of descendency from the earliest records we have found down to David Dugay - our Dad's great grandfather.

Army Service 1845 - 1860

David enlisted in the army on 27th February 1845, aged 19 years 2 months. In those days men enlisted for life or until they were no longer able to serve being too old or infirm. One oddity is that when he signed on he gave his age as 17 years and 10 months. Why? Perhaps he wasn't aware of his real date of birth, or maybe he might just have been trying to disguise his history of prison.

He enlisted with the 1st Battalion 3rd Regiment of Foot - the East Kent regiment known as the Buffs. They had recently returned from India and were taking the opportunity to replace men that had been lost in India, before they moved to Ireland in 1846.

Joining the army would probably have felt like an escape from the hardship. Mechanisation was being introduced to farming reducing the opportunities for work. 

David was posted with his battalion to the following sequence of stations:

• 1845 Ireland 

• 1851 Malta

• 1854 Greece

• 1855 Crimea (Siege of Sevastopol)

• 1856 Ionian Islands

• 1859 China

• 1861 England 

He stayed with the Buffs for fifteen years, notably serving in the Crimean War at the siege of Sevastopol, and later in India and China. Here are some soldiers from his regiment in Crimea about 1855.

He was promoted to Serjeant on 1st Nov 1858. In China he picked up an infection which left him disfigured and unable to serve any longer. The exact nature of his illness isn't clear but the Army were careful to deny responsibility for it as this Medical Officer's report in Hong Kong on 30th July 1860 testifies:

“Recommended for change of climate for a large ulcer of the nose and impaired health, the result of constitutional predisposition and not aggravated by office or intemperance.”

On 3rd April 1861 David was in the Army Hospital in Chatham Kent, where the Medical Officer reported:

“Having examined Serjeant David Duggay I am of the opinion he is unfit for further service in consequence of disfigurement from loss of nose the result of ulceration.”

At this time his battalion was en route from China to Portsmouth, arriving on 16th April. There's no record of David having travelled to England in advance of the battalion. Maybe there were regular sailings. It's also significant that David wasn't awarded a medal for his service in China, meaning that he didn't take part in any of the battles.

So he was out of the Army but he did get a pension for his fifteen years service – one shilling per week, something like five pounds a week today. He was the first Dugay of our family to serve in the Army and many more Dugays followed him into the Army later, very often in Kent regiments. There are frequent connections with Kent in the Dugay family, even though their origins are in Hampshire. 

In spite of his facial disfigurement, about eighteen months after leaving the army, at the age of 37 David got married to Ann Lawes. She was 22, and was in service on a large farm north of Andover. Originally she was from Basingstoke, which in those days was a small country town.

After their marriage David and Ann lived in Longparish and had their first two children, Sarah in 1863 and William in 1865. They lived in the George Inn at Longparish where David was innkeeper with his father William between until 1866. It was situated away from the village in a fairly isolated spot called Cottage End near Longparish railway station. Perhaps the idea was to catch the trade from railway passengers but it wasn't successful. Several publicans of the George became bankrupt including David Dugay in 1866. This staged picture seems to have some railway staff in it.

They moved from Longparish to Dummer after the bankruptcy and David worked from then on as a farm labourer. Their third child Henry was born in Dummer in 1868. And later Kate Agnes Dugay was born in Dummer in May 1870. She was baptised Agnes Kate on 8th May 1870, parents David Dugay and Ann. Her exact date of birth we don't know because her birth seems not to have been registered, and so she never had a birth certificate. Her name appears as Agnes Kate in the 1871 and 1881 census, but as soon as she left home she called herself Kate Agnes.

Sadly Kate's father David became ill with tuberculosis around the time Kate was born and he died on 22nd Feb 1871 when Kate was less than a year old. So she never knew her father.

Kate's mother Ann was then left a widow with four children to bring up, no money and no income. She must have fallen onto the parish for poor relief, at least initially. By 1881 they had moved to North Waltham just a couple of miles from Dummer (picture below). Ann is there, a widow, with all four children, and a lodger called Adolphus Whittick. And in addition there are three more children all bearing the Dugay name, the first born in 1875, four years after David Dugay died. So who is the father of these children? It seems fairly clear that it's the lodger Adolphus Whittick. The last child Ellen is baptised as Ellen Whittick Dugay. It was common for illegitimate children to take the father's surname as a middle name. Later when they marry, the illegitimate children name their father as Adolphus. So Kate was raised in a family unit with seven children with her real mother Ann, and Adolphus Whittick as the father.

When Kate Dugay married William Russell she named Adolphus Whittick as her father. This is probably because she thought of Adolphus as her father, even though her father was actually David Dugay.

At some point during this period Kate left home to work in service. She appears in the 1891 census as a cook aged 22 for the Vernon family in Lewisham, just before her marriage. Her life after marrying William Russell is documented in the Russell Family page.

A French Connection?