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Tuesday, September 22, 2009

BEDTIME GENEALOGY 37

I'll post the next part of "The Haskell Inheritance" on Tuesday night but
while re-reading the last part I was struck again on how many spelling
variations there were on a name. This time it wasn't the Haskell family
name but the name "William".

Since that is my own first name, I tend to notice such things.

At any rate, just in the court records I quoted in the last section, William was
spelled as "Willem", "Wilem", and my personal favorite "Willyham". Now
the books I've found these court records in are transcriptions of the originals
so I can only guess that in each case the depositions and testimonies were
written down by an assortment of clerks with varying degrees of education.

While I get a grin out of the spelling, one thing that frustrates me when it occurs
are the entries that read something like "John Smith age 52 testified that his sister,
etc." ....and that's all there is to that!

Etc???

Etc. WHAT? What bit of knowledge is hidden away behind that etc.?

Ah well. Maybe someday I'll see the originals of one of them and find out!

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