When my friends traced back their family name line clear back to Shakespeare, I was a little jealous - it's always fun to have someone famous on your line. Somehow a really famous playwrite has way more class than the Hershey's my Pennsylvania line goes back to.
When hunting past names, it helps a LOT when some mother picked names that were not the same as everyone else's, especially when they are at least not the same as the cousins.... it is not at all helpful when there are so many Peter and Henrietta Jensens; and then when they want to keep certain names in the family, all the siblings name their children the same, so all the cousins in that county end up being named the same, and when someone like me comes along 150 years later, it is NOT easy to ferret out which is which.
My step-brother's mom's last name was POE. And who is the most populart Poe we know? You would not believe how many Edgar Allen Poes there are born in this country... probably still being named that! And he did not have any sons of his own, these are other distant relatives.
Naoma named her children interesting names - Doleski, Almira, Parmenus, Lucella and Reiabel. Those are definitely easily findable later.
Spurgeon W Bright was b in Nebraska in 1894... that name just cracked me up.
My 3rd ggrandfather Zera Johnson was fairly easy to trace. So was Wellington W Wilson.
Tamsel Hahn had a niece named after her. I never could figure out where it came from... Wiki searches only come up with a big Tamsel estate, in Poland. But those two in my great grandfather's family were well loved women. (but you should see how 'clever' the census takers get when spelling their name, it was just too weird.)
Naming trends are pretty interesting. Naming one's children after presidents and other popular statesmen was quite the thing back in the 1800's, so there are many Benjamin Franklins out there... B F Johnson, Ben F Morris... Also George Washington Whatever.
You'll get a family of bible lovers in the early 1800's and before. The puritans seemed to like those, plus adjectives that connoted what they hoped their child would be, perhaps? Thankful comes to mind, I"ve seen that many times.
Here are some others: Remember Allerton, Love Brewster, Humility Cooper...
Wrestling Brewster... more description than hopeful prophecy, I'm thinking there.
Oceanus Hopkins and Seaborn Cotton were both born en route to Plymouth.
The girls' names seemed less standard... or at least they didn't really 'stick' like the biblical names the boys were getting. Dorcas was VERY popular, as were Honor, Hope, Jerusha, and Kezia.
Other odd ones: Loveday Scantlebury was born in 1794, really distinctive.
Barzilla was WAY more popular than I ever imagined - so many of them came up when I did a first name search on the index.
Revilo was one of my family names, so I did a first name search for that, it is so unique... NOT! It was really popular. I keep picturing a magician or a character out of Harry Potter. It took me a while to figure out WHY it was so popular.... reverse the letters!
Anderville just seemed really strange; I laughed when I saw Lilley Flower, md to Arthur Flower... (I wonder if they named their daughters Rose and Daisy.)
Babies are often just called 'baby' on many census, even when they were 4, 5, 6 months old. Perhaps they were sickly and not expected to live.... I'm not really certain why they weren't named, but it wasn't uncommon to see that. (and more than once I've found someone's name who had just died, too.)
So I was REALLY distraught when I read on the census back in 1870 - Baby Wise 'dead on ice', I was picturing this poor family, they've got the baby laid out in the parlor there, in the summer, trying to keep it 'fresh' for the funeral maybe? So sad. Then I scanned further over to the right and realized the scribe had written it on the wrong line.
Baby Wise was just fine!! The next fellow "Deals in Ice" for his occupation. WHEW!!
I'll leave you with one last one for now, I found her when I was looking for Charlotte Duncan, my grandmother's great aunt. She (unfortunately) married Jacob Butt and they moved to Oregon.
I did an index search... she was sometimes Emma (her middle name,) and sometimes Lottie.
I laughed literally out loud when I found this Charlotte, the wife of Samuel.
She was on the census as Lotta Butt.
the end.
(of part one)
