Hi Grace,

I'm not saying that this is what has happened with your Thomas Lennox Seaton, other than being a possibility, but I have come across at least a dozen or so people in 1800s Australia who have changed their names (or part of their names) on entering the army or navy, or on entering Australia, or for their travel documents to Australia. Many had an invented father's name to suit their new one.

The ones I managed to trace had various reasons for doing so, including becoming bankrupt in Britain, hiding a previous marriage and children, or avoiding the law.
More innocently, people often added a middle name because there were other people with the same name, or because they wanted to add a family name.
Thomas Seaton may well have added the "Lennox" because of the numerous other Thomas Seatons in Scotland/England at the time.

If a father was unknown he would often be invented to fill the space on an application form or certificate, and to save explanations.

Application forms, certificates, family and other records show that people almost always kept their real day and month of birth, even when deducting a few years.

I don’t know whether the law differed in Australia, but in Britain it was not illegal to informally change one’s surname, so long it was not for a criminal purpose. You could call yourself anything you liked, and could obtain official records under the new name so long as you could prove that it was the name you were known by.

But how to find out whether he changed his name? All I can suggest is (1) to find out his birthday (old “birthday books” etc.) and (2) to go through every possible record, including every official document, even when you think it won't tell you any more than you know already. With one man I went through dozens of army muster records, and finally came across "otherwise known as ....." which was a completely different name to the one he had been using for years.

Have you looked for an illegitimate Thomas under his mother's surname?

ScotlandsPeople has a Mary Catherine Douglas born or bapt on 21 Dec.1849 (only one found between 1820 & 1850).
- Need credits to find out parents’ names and the place.

No matches in ScotlandsPeople 1800-1850 on exact name for Duncan Albert Seaton, nor on variant forenames.

Did PaddyB find out about the service record, and exactly what was written on the rim of TLS’s medals?

Sue