In some census returns, my family is listed as Davenport, others as Devenport. What I was told by my grandparents is that the accents of some of their ancestors made Davenport sound like Devenport. Also when a person was illiterate, it would have been up to the census enumerator to figure out how a name was spelled. This would easily account for the many different spellings of names. We have quite a few first names with that problem, as well. If you think Davenport is bad, you should see how many different spellings there are for Latham, or even something as simple as Hall! Tracy Bretz ----- Original Message ----- From: "Nancy Carter" <ncarter@vzinet.com> To: <DAVENPORT-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Saturday, February 05, 2000 5:43 AM Subject: [DAVENPORT] DEVENPORT/DAVENPORT > Hello Jan & Tom, > I found a lot of my "Davenports" in the 1880 TN Census census, spelled > as "Devenport". Don't dismiss the spelling too quickly., check both ! > Nancy > >