My grandmothers were born in 1882 and 1889. Neither had more than a six grade education, yet neither was ignorant. They loved the written word, were soft spoken, interested in world events, and politically correct for their time. Their penmanship was terrible. They knew how to express ideas very well, but reading the results in 2002 is a challenge unless you know that the "W" that has you stumped is actually a "M", but the "M" could also be an "N" and sometimes the "Q" is actually the letter "P" Thirty years earlier my 3x grandfathers surname was spelled three different ways on his marriage license, but by the 1870 census had settled on one spelling for the surname of his children. In 2002 the IL Marriage Index spells the surname as it was written on the license which is not the surname of my grandmother. I personally think the multiple spellings of a surname was born of circumstance rather than cleverness. Maybe he couldn't spell his last name and neither could the census taker or town hall clerk. Maybe he had a speech impediment. Or maybe the writer knew a family whose surname sounded the same and he could spell their name. And how about the immigrant who added a distinct brogue or guttural sound to the pronunciation of his surname? The German language, for instance, has no letter "W," and the sound (double u) does not exist. Thus a common word like "water" sounds like "vater." The Spanish have no "J," or any pronunciation for it, in their language. The town San Jose in neighbouring Mason County becomes San Hose - aa in Mexico. Old Dutch surnames are just as unwieldy. Hans' daughter, Annetje, might well be recorded as Annette Handotter. Langestaet, a town in Holland, became the surname of the Longstreet family in the New World. There are many other exceptions to surnames. Nicknames are a good example. How many of those found their way into old documents? Just discovering the roots of a surname can be an exciting adventure. Whether a lawyer was smart because he could spell a surname more than one way could be debated. Perhaps he lived in an area like New York where he was exposed to a greater range of surnames and spellings. Our "world" was actually pretty small prior to the Revolutionary War, and settling the wild west was as much a challenge to pioneers, as it was to lawyers and the folks who recorded the events. Pj