Hi. It was VERY common for people to spell the same name differently. The people in one family even did it. Most people were illiterate and had no way of knowing how to spell their own names. Census takers were often barely literate and spelled names phonetically, thus changing names. Immigrants pronounced their names with the native pronunciation. Census takers "translated" the pronunciations to American spellings. "Saliers" is French and is pronounced "Sal -yeah". Along the way, the original spelling was changed to "Salya", "Salyer", "Salyers", Sellers", Sellars, etc. In my Phillips line, my g-g-grandmother spelled her name "Phillips". Her next door neighbor, who was either her brother or nephew, spelled his name "Philips". NEVER go by spelling when doing genealogy research. The reasons above are just a few of many reasons spellings of the same name changed. On Feb 27, 2008, at 6:53 PM, gc-gateway@rootsweb.com wrote: > This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. > > Author: skjones1 > Surnames: > Classification: queries > > Message Board URL: > > http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.phillips/ > 214.217.273.3179.3182.1.2.1.2.2.1.2.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1/mb.ashx > > Message Board Post: > > Ok Thanks.. I only wondered about the Native American part because > I am a direct descendant to William Phillips and Esther Vickrey > they were my 4 great grandparents and I had a ancestral DNA test > done a few months back and my dna test came back showing I am 80% > European and 20% Native American.. I know most of my European is > Irish, Scottish, English, French and possibly German...But I have > no idea which Native tribe I am from and its become a task for me > to track down. > (I have no names through out my family lines that were Indian > except for hearsay (what people has told me) and this dna test. I > was just trying to figure out where the Indian come from and which > side of my family it came out of. If not my moms side then it must > be my dads side.) Also I was reading over the stuff Nancy sent me > and it is very confusing.. its almost like no one really knows for > sure if William is really Richard and Juliana's son. I found > William and Esther in the 1850 census of Guilford Co. and the last > name was spelt Philips instead of Phillips was this a mistake in > the spelling of the last name or did they spell it two different ways? > > Important Note: > The author of this message may not be subscribed to this list. If > you would like to reply to them, please click on the Message Board > URL link above and respond on the board. > > > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to PHILLIPS- > request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes > in the subject and the body of the message >