Carolyn M. McDaniel wrote: > > Dear List Subscribers: > Bayoujac asked if Pendleton is a variation of Pennington. We then > got three re-sent messages saying that "no it wasn't." > That is not quite correct. Pennington is a distinct surname as is > Pendleton, but there are many times when the names have been substituted for > one another, and there are many other substitution as well. > In my own case I have found that Pennington and Pemberton -- two > distinct surnames -- have been used for the same family in Baltimore County, > MD, who seem to have come from the Cecil Co. Penningtons. The same thing > may have happened on the Eastern Shore of Maryland with a Talbot County > Quaker family. I haven't done the research on them to completely determine it. > There were times when our ancestors decided they didn't want to use > their surname anymore and simply changed it themselves. This may have > happened because of family disputes, changes to inherit from another family, > trouble with authorities, or disownment within their religion. Other more > frequent changes occurred because early people didn't always write and > records were kept by others. Spellings became confused and one branch of > the family found themselves spelling their names differently. > Your Cousin, > Carolyn > That's correct Carolyn, it is the same no matter what your surname is.. for those of you with Pennington and Boone surnames you can subscribe to the Pennington Pedigree magazine, which I had posted a few days ago and there are various spellings there....jenell