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Family Matters
Updated December 30, 2008

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Tracking our roots, cross country. Many records or legal documents were lost when courthouses were burned, during the war, yet there were many adoptions or marriages that were never legalized as people simply changed their last name. Alabama didn't even start recording birth certificates until about 1908 and Kansas had a lot of errors on the birth certificates of my family...Nicknames confuse the process and back then there were many Buds, Marys, Pollys, Dolly, Sallys, Kitty, Bettie, and usually these nicknames had nothing to do with their legal name, and often times the legal name was totally forgotten by relatives and friends. Mom heard that her dad was often called Nick. His mother's name was Anna Lou yet called Annie Lee. This causes many errors on legal documents such as their death certificate...Cecil's death certificate shows his wife was Ellie McLain but she was legally named Alice Emma McClain and her mom called her by Emmer. Her great grandpa James McClain married a woman only known as Anna and we ask why didn't anyone ask about her maiden name or did she have an indian name before she got married....My Uncle Mat Fenn is listed as Mathew at the cemetery yet his real name was Madison and his mother Emeline was shown as Emily on the census records plus his sister Ida Fenn was listed as Ida Fennel; Fenn was actually Fann in the 1700s. Then I believe that my grandpa William Frank Fenn was really named Franklin... My Dad was Frank but was mostly known as Bud. My Uncle Cecil was mainly known as Junior. My grandmother Luella was called Lue or Rue while her sister Amy Marie was known as Aunt Mae. Luella's death certificate shows her mother's name was Gladys but it was Lattie Cedonia. My grandpa Carter's death certificate shows his wife's name as Ellie but it was Alice Emma and I always heard that her name was Emily. My husband's Aunt Billie was legally named Glennie Thornton and her sister Tutor was legally named Loraine, so I guess very few knew.
Then some liked to use their middle name, like my Uncle Billy preferred to be called Larry...Another issue we deal with is when those native americans were baptised, they were given an English name, so if you were searching the indian rolls, which name would be used? Some just married an indian and "gave" them a Christian name...Indians also liked hearing new names and simply switched names on their own. Plus we had other families who enjoyed changing the spelling of their name like McClain became McLain/McLean/Mc Lane, or the Cochran became Cochrane and Boseman became Bozeman or Boozman or even Bosman and once found on a census looking like Bogeman and then Brooke became Brooks.
Think about Pocahontas - she was called Rebekah. Sequoyah's real name was George Guess, which was derived from Guest or Guist and we find Gist among our relatives in the Carolinas about 1800. Chief Red Eagle was really William Weatherford, the son of Charles, yet some say previous generations spelled it as Whitherford. Then about Chief Powhatan, nobody will ever know the many names of his wives and children, nor where they migrated and the Little/ Weatherford research of Kentucky had focused on a young indian bride named Cleopatra.Few had education, could not read nor write, did not know their date of birth and many did not know their parents nor where they came from. My granny Lorena, known as Aunt Rena, had her numbers mixed up on several papers, but much of her time was spent out on the farm and not in a classroom. Her son Charles Henderson could not read nor write, signed his name with an X mark and he is buried in an indian cemetery near Fort Mitchell. Then we have the prejudiced census takers who wrote down only what they heard instead of the official spelling of names or even the racial problems they had, like the only races were black or white, and anything other than that would be called Mulatto, which really is not fair to the Native Americans that we are seeking. Indians

 
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