>I have been trying to figure out for years when my 2nd great grandfather >changed the spelling of his name three times during his life. These are >not random misspellings, but deliberate changes. I had an example of this when I started research on my husband's family (Wagoner). In two generations I found it spelled Waggoner, Wagoner, and Wagner. (They were definately the same family). A 92 year old aunt told me "some of those durn boys just got too lazy to spell it right (which covered the version with dropped g). When I asked her about the Wagner, she told me "them others didn't like each other so they thought by spelling their name different, people wouldn't know they wuz related". I decided that if she made it to her age and was as sharp as she was, I wasn't going to doubt her. (Grin) (It's just one idea on name spellings, I guess). Alicia Brown