When I was growing up, it was confusing to me that there were people who pronounced their name Rowe- Blee. My grandmother said there was a family connection with them but she always pronounced the family name Robb - Blee. One brother in the Cornwall/Cornwell family changed his name due to a family feud and this led to a change in the pronunciation. If our ancestor's name origin is French, difficulties in pronunciation, illiteracy, or a wish to Anglicize it to "fit in" after the French and Indian Wars may have led to the change. Has anyone ever tried to trace it back and see when and where the split may have occurred? Just curious. Phyllis Reed <BR><BR><BR>**************************************<BR> AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at http://www.aol.com.

In some ways this is a "I say tomato, you say tomato" thing. And, as Doug says in his message, there are many, many spelling variations and no doubt the same applies to pronunciation. However, some of the major splits we know about are these: In Huntington, NY records (1730s) -- we find Rublier, Rublear, Rublere and Rubleer. Rublear is the variation used in church records; other variations appear in land and other records at fair frequency.This is the earliest spelling we know about. And, we don't find it elsewhere, or later. Then, we begin to see the family go up the Hudson River, we see some other variations in land and tax records. Including Rappelyea, Rubeley. Then, they land in Lanesborough, MA before the Revolution. This is all within a fairly short span of time. About 40 years. The Lanesborough records consistently show the spelling as Robblee in the early records. Now we see a split that distinquishes the major branches of the family that we know about (this is not including the other branches we can't yet connect, that settled in NY state). The Revolutionary War played a major role in some of this. The two loyalist brothers went to Nova Scotia. They retained the spelling Robblee, and that is used by most descendants to this day. William and Keturah's children who settled in VT used Rublee, and that spelling is used to this day. This is my line. One of their sons, William, stayed in Lanesborough, and seemed to have used Rubblee, but the next generation, who went to Ellington, NY used Rublee, and still do. Reuben went to Granville, NY and used Robblee. However, within a generation, those two Bs got to be too much, and most of the descendants used Roblee, again to this day. Why the Michigan family used Rablee, I have no idea! Hope this helps. Cindy p.s. Hopefully folks have seen my summary on the Roblee web page.