I was reading the email from Madge about the name "Moppin." At the reunion, Bill Albertson brought up the spelling of either Moppin or Mappin and stated that he believed that they were not our Maupins. I think that his reasoning went something like this, but my memory may not be accurate: At one time, one of the Maupins was a census taker and he listed someone with the name Moppin or Mappin as living in a certain place. Bill reasoned, and it made sense to me, that if that had been a Maupin, he would have corrected the spelling or made some mention of it. Denise

That does not mean their name wasn't originally MAUPIN. Many of our ancestors were illiterate and didn't even KNOW how their name was to be spelled. It was up to the "officials" who could read and write to write it down the way they thought it should be written. Of course, most of them were not far ahead of the non-readers and writers, as they spelled phonetically. Thus, you sometimes have different spellings of the same name within the same family. It is reasonable to me, that if an illiterate person had something as important as a deed for land with his name spelled as MOPPIN, because that is the way the County Clerk spelled it, he would prefer that spelling if and when he or his children learned to read and write, thus for generations to come the name would be spelled as MOPPIN rather than MAUPIN. Our ancestors and the officials making the records were seldom fussy about how their names were spelled. In the years of my research experience, I've seen records with several spellings of the same name within the same document! Just about anything is possible as we try to put the lives of our ancestors back together so we can know them better. Only research on these particular families could/would prove if they were connected to the MAUPINs. Phyllis J. Bauer *********** REPLY SEPARATOR *********** On 11/2/00 at 8:38 AM James Watson wrote: >I was reading the email from Madge about the name "Moppin." At the >reunion, Bill Albertson brought up the spelling of either Moppin or >Mappin and stated that he believed that they were not our Maupins. I >think that his reasoning went something like this, but my memory may not >be accurate: At one time, one of the Maupins was a census taker and he >listed someone with the name Moppin or Mappin as living in a certain >place. Bill reasoned, and it made sense to me, that if that had been a >Maupin, he would have corrected the spelling or made some mention of it. > >Denise > > >==== MAUPIN Mailing List ==== >RootsWeb forbids posting of copyrighted material without permission of the author. Read RootsWeb's Acceptable Use Policy at ><http://www.rootsweb.com/rootsweb/aup.html>