Last night at the local FHC, I was looking in Caswell Co. NC in the 1850 census, and found some "Mafey"...or some such name...on page 238. A cross check with Ancestry.com indicated that their researcher felt these were Masseys....I have seen all kinds of Massey spellings, but never this far from what I expect. If these are real Masseys, it would fit into my history pretty well. Anyone have any ideas?

Hi Keith, Yes, that's possible. Remember at one time in the past people made an "s" that looks like an "f". I've seen legal documents with the letters looking like: Mafsey, Maffey etc. but the most unusual I ran across was Muzzie. Anything that was phonetic and of course, their pronunciation was very important. It was spelled like it sounded. Have fun. Betty ============================================ -----Original Message----- From: Keith W. Riley [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, June 01, 2001 1:35 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [MASSEY-L] Spellings of Massey Last night at the local FHC, I was looking in Caswell Co. NC in the 1850 census, and found some "Mafey"...or some such name...on page 238. A cross check with Ancestry.com indicated that their researcher felt these were Masseys....I have seen all kinds of Massey spellings, but never this far from what I expect. If these are real Masseys, it would fit into my history pretty well. Anyone have any ideas?

I can see no reason why Mafey is not a variation of Massey: Mafsey was the normal way of writing Massey in the early 1800s. By the same token, Macey may also well be a variation, although also a name in its own right. For more info, see my web page http://www.geocities.com/donaldmasseyuk/masseymore.html Donald Massey ----- Original Message ----- > ...and found some "Mafey"...or some such name...on page 238. A cross > check with Ancestry.com indicated that their researcher felt these were > Masseys....I have seen all kinds of Massey spellings, but never this far > from what I expect.