The William Webb Wagg investigation (2)
Part 2: Where did the “Webb Wagg” name come from?
One of the most persistent questions in the Webb Wagg family has always been this: where did the name “Webb Wagg” come from? Why does “Webb” sometimes appear as a surname, sometimes as a given name, and sometimes not at all?
This post explains how that question was finally answered.
Connecting through Ancestry
In early 2017, while this investigation was underway, I connected on Ancestry with a third cousin descended from William Webb-Wagg (1873–1974), a son of William and Sarah. After corresponding online, we arranged to meet in person.
At that meeting, she shared two original documents that had been carefully preserved through successive generations of what I now think of as “the Williams” — the repeated use of William reflecting the continuity of the family line. I was able to examine both documents firsthand.
While they do not answer every question about William’s origins, they provide something equally important: direct evidence showing how and when “Webb” entered the family’s naming practice.
William as “Webb” at sea
The first document is William’s discharge from the ship Gwalior, dated 4 March 1853. The Gwalior was a working vessel operating in Australian and Pacific waters during the early 1850s.
What matters most is the name under which William was serving.
He appears not as Wagg, but as Webb.
This is not a clerical error or an isolated variation. It aligns with later references describing him as “old Billy Webb,” and strongly suggests that Webb was the name he used in his working life — particularly in maritime contexts.
In the environment of ships, crews, and transient employment, this was the name by which he was known.
William as “Wagg” at marriage
Just six weeks later, on 18 April 1853, William married Sarah Turner at St James’ Church, Sydney. In the original parish register, he appears as William Wagg.
One of the witnesses was Sarah’s sister, Jane Turner, who later married John Trickett.
By early 1853, William was therefore operating under two names simultaneously:
Webb in his working and maritime life
Wagg in formal and legal records
This dual usage was not momentary. It became a defining feature of his identity.
When “Webb” enters the official record
In the New South Wales birth registrations of William and Sarah’s children, the family surname is consistently recorded as Wagg.
But beginning in 1862, with the birth of their fourth child Charles, something changes.
From this point forward, Webb begins to appear as a given name. Several of the children carry it, including Charles W. Wagg, and the pattern continues into subsequent generations.
This shift is revealing. It shows that Webb was not originally the family’s inherited surname, but it was clearly meaningful to William — important enough to be deliberately preserved and transmitted to his descendants.
It was no longer merely an alias. It had become part of the family’s identity.
Rethinking William’s origins
For many years, it was assumed that William was the son of William Wagg and Sophia Kitchen, who arrived in Australia in 1837 with a young son named William.
As established in Part 1, this assumption cannot be correct. That William died near Bathurst in 1873 and was a different individual entirely.
Our William died on 8 January 1905 at his home, 54 Blues Point Road, North Sydney.
What we now know — and what remains uncertain
Taken together, the evidence establishes a coherent and consistent profile.
Our William appears to have been:
born about 1826 in Norwich
present in Australia by about 1845
using the name Webb in working and maritime contexts
marrying as Wagg in Sydney in 1853
preserving Webb as a given name in his children and descendants
Only one documented arrival aligns closely with this profile: a William Wagg transported to Van Diemen’s Land as a convict in 1845, who later failed to report for muster in 1849 and then disappears from Tasmanian records.
The emerging explanation
By the time I met my Webb Wagg cousin in early 2017, the pieces were already beginning to align.
On the balance of probabilities, the evidence suggested that our William Webb Wagg was the same man transported to Van Diemen’s Land in 1845 — a man who subsequently left the probation system, adopted the name Webb in his working life, and established himself in Sydney by 1853.
What could not yet be documented directly was the precise mechanism of that transition.
Crew lists from this period are incomplete, and maritime employment records often survive only fragmentarily. It may never be possible to reconstruct every step by which William moved from Van Diemen’s Land probation to maritime employment and eventual settlement.
But the broader pattern is clear.
The name Webb did not originate within William’s English birth family. It was a name that emerged in Australia, adopted after he absconded from Van Diemen’s Land. It became the name he used in his working life at sea, the name by which he was widely known, and ultimately a name he chose to preserve by passing it on to his children. In this way, Webb became not an inherited surname, but a constructed identity — one that began in concealment but endured as a lasting part of the family’s history.
Setting the stage for the next phase
The remaining question is not whether William left Van Diemen’s Land, but what the convict records themselves reveal about him — his origins, his sentence, his conduct, and the circumstances under which he disappears from the Tasmanian record.
The next part of this investigation turns to those records directly.
They mark the point at which William Wagg vanishes — and where William Webb begins to emerge.
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William Webb Wagg investigation series
This post forms part of the ongoing investigation into the origins of William Webb Wagg. The full series, including all published posts and supporting material, can be accessed here:
