Our Ancestors

[digitS']

Recently, I learned that my Grandmother Pearl's sister married a guy who was known to family and friends as "Wink." I can imagine that this nickname had to do with a problem he had with one eye but, ya know, it could have been that the family was a little embarrassed but accepting of little Wink for some characteristic or other .

This fits a little with @heirloomgal 's comment on a (second?) cousin's name. But, it all reminds me how we miss so much by just looking at old census and such records of names and dates. Just staying with names , Pearl's son Orval's name was written in 3 different ways by census workers!

Something else that I learned recently is that one person in the family married a Foster. No, that was the family name but it just goes to show how the "trail" can be lost and how the whole genealogical scheme can come crashing down .

Would "intangible" be the correct word as one traces ancestry back through the centuries? We have 4 grandparents. Each of them had 4 grandparents, so there were 16 Great Greats and those folks? . If we just stay on the straight and narrow (regardless of Fosters ), we have to realize that there was a virtual multitude of ancestors.

We may have the confusion of the person my family knew as "Aunt Sis" and @baymule renamed "Ain't Sis," on one of my TEG threads of a similar nature. But, Bay', she really was Aunt Sis because her nephew (my great grandfather) married her husband's sister so .

Steve
someone said the other day that some of Socrates' DNA might still be around but, so what ?

 

[Dirtmechanic]

I for one am glad we no longer carry the name of the town or area we are from like the really old days. My mom is from Frogeye AL

 

[flowerbug]

I for one am glad we no longer carry the name of the town or area we are from like the really old days. My mom is from Frogeye AL

haha!

on one side of the family the last names are related to hill or river and on the other side it is a color. not much originality there...

 

[Dirtmechanic]

In the old tongues, the "TH" in the name "Rothgar" was pronounced with a heavy "DD" like you can still hear in the echoes of the Norse and Swedish and Danish. The "Rothgar" changed spelling to "Rodger" with little change in the phonetic, save an end tonal related to "Rodger-son" and soon enough, "Rodgers". Now its down to Rogers, with or without a sweater. It must have been the living language aspect of the olde english. In Denmark, year 1103 AD, the story Beowulf came to pen and paper, so the changes came after at sometime. Mark Twain advised not looking to far up a family tree or you risk finding feet dangling from the end of a rope. I should be so lucky. Word has it that Old King Rothgar slept with a demon and produced for me evil cousins. We know of at least one, Grendel, and he died in a fight -but you know how it goes. I found out I had a half brother when I was 30.

 

[digitS']

Every state must have a share of the weird place names ... Frogeye?

Places out in the middle of nowhere would be especially vulnerable to some mapmaker's strange sense of humor. When the residents make weird choices - that seems rather bizarre.

This area wasn't immune to weirdness. Tensed. I know the story - the reversing and change of spelling, etc. But, they came up with a name that has a clear meaning to nearly everyone living nearby. Even in French, the words are nearly the same.

Of course, if you feel a bit tense, you can go off to the Boise neighborhood and visit Couch. That may be a good place to take a nap .

Not all that far from here is Havre, Montana. Now the French would never pronounce the name of their city as the US locals do! "You can have'er, I don't want 'er."

Steve