Hi John, unfortunately your logic (that you and your father, etc) always spelled the name the same, makes a couple assumptions that cannot be proven. They are: -- that the past was just like the present. In other words that spelling mattered. Actually our English and Scots ancestors were a bit behind other parts of Europe, like the future German speaking countries. They had standardized spelling a lot earlier than English. If you go back three hundred years you will find many many variant spellings in published materials by highly educated people. That is because spelling was phonetic. One spelled a word as one heard it. Though sometimes people spelled it many different ways, maybe to be creative? Who knows? -- In the past people didn't go to school so they couldn't spell right or wrong. Granted, illiteracy rates in England, which are better documented than in other British countries, have been low for the last 300 or so years. I am recalling what Michael Gandy (a leading British genealogist) said in a lecture, in which he gave actual statistics. However most people attended until early teen years, at most, and then rarely used it. They didn't read newspapers. In fact many times they signed baptisms and marriage records with an X because to actually write your name was very uppity and it could have cost them to step out of rank. So many times signing your name with an X does not indicate illiteracy, at least in the UK. In 1830 in the hills of Tennessee -- now that's another matter entirely. -- If the ancestor was of a class where writing names was permitted, and always if he were not, often a clerk wrote the name down. This was a clerk who lacked the concept of standardized spelling of any words. Before that, a scribe. If you check the parish records, you will see that they were written by one person for some length of time -- a clerk or even the minister. The ancestor did NOT sign his name, such as one would do today. The clerk wrote it down. If the clerk or minister certainly didn't ask a commoner how to spell his name. First of all the working man was ignorant and probably had no idea how to do that, in the clerk's opinion. The clerk had several ways of spelling the name and just did it. It would certainly have been very very unBritish for a literate, middle class clerk to ask a working man how to spell his name. It would certainly be unheard of for a farmer or carpenter, etc, to correct a clerk's spelling. Whether this worked for merchants and above, I do not know. I guess I'll have to ask Michael Gandy, who researched this. ---The clerk wrote the name down phonetically as he heard it. Now there used to be many, many many local accents in the UK. These are now disappearing due to mass media, however even today, most of the rest of us cannot understand a Geordie and people in Belfast find the native of Ballymena incomprehensible. It is very possible for a clerk or taxman from even twenty miles away to hear a surname, pronounced in a local accent, 'differently' and to transcribe it differently than a local man would. So if you think your ancestors could either always read and write, were always permitted to give their opinion to the clerk of the parish and the king's men collecting taxes, etc, or that their pronunciation of their name was always correctly heard and correctly written down by all clerks, etc, whose records survive -- well then, I have a great bridge in Brooklyn that you might want to purchase cheap. Another wrinkle is that we do not know the local patois. We speak English, not Scots. Many Scots records were recorded in Scots. The earlier ones in Latin. One can find some very strange spellings when Scots or English names are written in Latin. -- I had another reason but have now forgotten it, like a standup comic with a list (Number 3: There is no number 3....). I've seen Hume as Home and I have definitely seen it as Hulme. The addition of an L simply indicates a minor difference in pronunciation, probably an Englishism. Earlier Scots records often spelled names like Simpson as Simson, indicating that the pronunciation didn't include an aspiration at the end of the first syllable. A little puff of air. The English love these things. They began creeping into lowland Scots records in the early 1800s -- at least in eastern Stirling. As family researchers, we usually do not study much. This works out okay -- it leaves work for our descendants to do, and since we aren't doing brain surgery though ill-prepared to do so, no one dies. Yet if we do 'git ejikated', one of the first things the teacher tries to pound into our thick skulls is that the first, the most common reason why we fail to bag our man is our failure to research surname variants. It look a few classes, many errors and backtracking, for me to learn this. My skull is pretty thick! However, duh, finally I realized it is generally true and I had to remember this. So I always do a number of things to seek out surname spelling variants when I start to research a name. Checking IGI is one. Another is looking the surname up in a good surname dictionary. Until the day comes when I've researched and published a few surname books myself, I have got to assume that the guys who wrote these books knew a tiny bit more than me. So maybe I should listen to them. I try hard to remember this <grin>. Where the screwups happen is the cases where I'm sure I know what the variants are or that there were none. That's when I screw up. I think the key to determining whether two names identified two different sets of people or the same ones is locale. Obviously, two spelling variants are more easily identified if suddenly the one variant is not present when the other is. Foreman, who wrote on "Old Mother" Cumberland, PA, the mother county for many of us, was confused over McCamey and McCamish, for example. However when I did a very careful study of the two, using records he probably couldn't so easily get, it was clear the McCameys were in Londonderry and the McCamish surname in Hamilton Twp. But it took some research to figure that out and a number of tables in Word. It's harder in the New World, I think, where there were more dialects and less education. People in a parish in the hills of Virginia, for example, could have come, and did come, from 'all over', not just Britain, but France, Germany, Holland, etc. Some were native speakers of the evolving local dialect. Others just hopped off the boat. In some cases you can find a man's surname spelled multiple ways in a deed or will (I've seen both). He didn't write the deed or will. The clerk did. Sometimes the only way to determine if there is one man or several is to seek out additional information, such as locale, associates, and his wife. For example there were two men named William McCarmack/McCarmish etc in Old Bedford County in the 1770s and 80s. One I was an Irish immigrant living on Little Wreck Island and one the son of Micajah McCarmack, whose place of residence I forget. However when about 1786 or so the county was divided up, one was still in Bedford (Micajah's son) and one was in the new Campbell County. That was the Irish immigrant because Little Wreck Island was in it. And when he split for Tennessee, only one appeared in the tax records for the area -- Micajah's son in Bedford. All these guys and several other families are indexed together in the deed book, court records (Micajah's family sued everyone, especially each other), and will book. Their surname spellings were entirely inconsistent and greatly varied. Sometimes the only way to tell which guy it was was by who he was suing or wheeling and dealing in land. Micajah's family endlessly did land deals, often with the Wrights, one of the leading families of the area. The McCamish boys never seemed to have left their plot. Carriers of the M222 variant and late of Tyrone, they'd learned how to survive among the Proddy mackerels: keep the head down out of the line of fire. However probably the spelling represented how the clerk heard the name and so was phonetic. The other thing to remember is the vowels change fastest both in time and locale. So it's H*me, alas. You can put any vowel in there and it worked for someone. I have found names that do not tend to vary in spelling in old records. However that doesn't include my maiden name of Mayson, oops, Mazon, oops, Meeson, oops Mason (through 20 variants in Durham records). Which I found a little unbelievable <grin>. Reading Scots parish records, I did answer a nagging question: what's the difference between a Fish and a Fisher in Scots records? One parish clerk had kindly written: Fish (Fitch) for me. I believe the Fitch is an Englishism. You see a lot of things like this in the parish records that can clarify surname changes that we'd never think of, today, just because I do not live in an area where Scots is competing with English. And so I learned a Fish was not a Fisher who got circumcized. He was a different animal entirely. So if you do get 'stuck' somewhere in the past, revisit surname spelling variants. It might help. Linda Merle -- in cold but sunny Pennsylvania ----- Original Message ----- From: "john.hume" <john.hume@ntlworld.com> To: scotch-irish@rootsweb.com Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 5:05:35 AM Subject: Re: [S-I] DNA Made Simple Many thanks Bill for your information. This is one of the sticking points about surnames. As a HUME, I become very 'cross' when people insist in putting an 'L' in the middle. Why HULME, as far as I am concerned there is absolutely no connection. HULME is part of Lancashire, Manchester etc, whereas HUME is Scottish, and of course spelt HOME as well. Again in Scotland if you mention HUME or HOME they know exactly how to spell it HUME. As with my cousin, TWEEDDALE is a family name and has never been spelt as TWEEDALE, it's double U, double E and double T, any other variation is not allowed. Although I do accept the spelling mistake in the 1881 census, it may have been down to enumerator's interpretation. This is the only example I can find of this error. However, has he has only two daughters, his branch of this very small family group will now cease. Now I know it sounds silly for me to not except any of the variations of my name, but when ever I am asked my name, I ALWAYS end it by spelling H.U.M.E. out to the person. My father did the same. So is it a family trait that unknowingly we have carried on?. When I started 25 years ago, I was able to research my direct family, using just the IGI, straight back to 1720, this took about three hours in total. I am then amazed at the difficultly that 'famous/infamous' people seem to have problems even going back to the mid 19th century. Maybe it was all due to the fact that my ancestors could read and write, thereby ensuring the surname was spelt correctly, obviously I don't know. Regarding the message about DNA in Ireland. I was in Belfast and Londonderry from 1965 -67. I was serving in the Royal Navy and had some splendid 'runs ashore' in both places, even got invited by a total stranger to a 21st birthday bash in Carrickfergus, frightens the life out of me now just to think about what may have happened. If I had known more about my Irish connections at that time I may have spent more of my time there more fruitfully. Now I'm thinking of going over next year, but obviously now having to pay for the privilege. It is a great shame that religion still plays a bit part over there. To me, it doesn't matter which religion you are, it is how you behave. I have some excellent friends who are Muslims, I treat them as they are my own brothers. By knowing them I understand their own divides in their religion, if you think Ireland has it's problems, try understanding the Muslims. As to having your DNA taken, I had mine done for one simple reason, I wish to know if there are any other members of my own particular branch of the HUMES out there. Paperwork becomes scarce before 1700, thereby, spending a £100 on such an easy test, is very good value compared to spending money on researching something which probably isn't even there. Also, once you receive your DNA markers, you are updated everytime a connection is made with your own DNA at all 4 points of markers. Well,I must be off, playing Santa again today. Only managed to upset five children yesterday, must do better today. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bill Limebeer" <limebeer@SENTEX.CA> To: <scotch-irish@rootsweb.com> Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 7:52 PM Subject: Re: [S-I] DNA Made Simple > On 12/12/2011 1:27 PM, john.hume wrote: > Hi John, > you maybe interested to know that there are Tweedales living in the > Province of New Brunswick Canada, One of whom I knew some years ago was > a Judge at Burton New Brunswick > Cheers > Bill > On.Can. >> Thank you Sara, glad I made someone smile today. >> >> I understand what you are saying about the Irish accent it really is >> difficult to understand. But for a real challenge you want to read the >> Yorkshire Bible. Now that is an education. But on a serious note, accents >> must have played a part in peoples names being entered on census sheets >> incorrectly. One of my cousins,has the surname TWEEDDALE, couldn't >> understand why he couldn't find his grandfather in the 1881 census. It >> was >> entered as TWIDALE, understandable of course >> John >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: "S. B. Mason"<sbmasonaz@cox.net> >> To:<scotch-irish@rootsweb.com> >> Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 5:54 PM >> Subject: Re: [S-I] DNA Made Simple >> >> >>> John, >>> >>> I had to laugh at your difficulty understanding Americans in films. My >>> husband and I long ago resorted to using closed captions on British >>> programs on US TV. My worst experience with communicating with people >>> speaking a common language (English) was on a trip to Ireland and >>> Northern Ireland with my hard-of-hearing brother. Since this was my >>> third visit I was fairly proficient in understanding what was being >>> said to me but I couldn't honestly say I understood every word but I'd >>> usually understand the intent of what was being said. My brother, even >>> when he could hear what was said, couldn't decipher the accent. So >>> he'd turn to me and say, "WHAT DID THEY SAY?", and expect me to repeat >>> it verbatim which, of course, I often couldn't do. Talk about >>> embarrassing! >>> >>> Sara >>> >>> On Dec 12, 2011, at 9:39 AM, scotch-irish-request@rootsweb.com wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> Today's Topics: >>>> >>>> 1. Re: DNA Made Simple (john.hume) >>>> >>>> >>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >>>> >>>> Message: 1 >>>> Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:39:05 -0000 >>>> From: "john.hume"<john.hume@ntlworld.com> >>>> Subject: Re: [S-I] DNA Made Simple >>>> To:<scotch-irish@rootsweb.com> >>>> Message-ID:<8ABED21AA179428687D830F272431AE5@GRUMPYPC> >>>> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; >>>> reply-type=original >>>> >>>> Hi Linda, >>>> >>>> Sorry I didn't send my condolences over your father's death, I must >>>> have >>>> missed that message. I lost my own father 3 years this Christmas >>>> Eve, he was >>>> 92 and as he served 12 years in the army and was in the Burmese jungle >>>> fighting the Japanese, I suppose we are lucky to have had him that >>>> long. >>>> As for cats, what can I say, our six month old moggie, jumped off >>>> the hedge, >>>> cracked her jaw straight in halve as she landed on a brick edge. >>>> Result over >>>> ?1,000 in vets fees. She was too young and too nice to be put down, >>>> now I've >>>> taken out pet insurance. >>>> Going back to WDYTYA, our programme is 1 hour long, and as on the >>>> BBC there >>>> are no commercial adverts. The USA ones are shown on the BBC >>>> channels and no >>>> adverts either but still only 30 minutes long, so I don't think the >>>> people >>>> over there are getting their money's worth. Do you have the voice of >>>> Mark >>>> Strong as the narrator. ?. Last week's 'celebrity' was an American >>>> comedienne, her family had originated from County Kildare in >>>> Ireland, a >>>> great shame they only spent about 5 minutes in that country before >>>> she and >>>> her brother retired to the pub. I certainly agree with the words OMG >>>> and >>>> WOW, my problem of late is trying to decipher what some Americans are >>>> actually saying.Films in particular are becoming very difficult to >>>> understand, and there was silly me thinking that we all spoke English. >>>> >>>> I've had some interesting e-mails from over your way regarding the >>>> family >>>> of Conway and Hume in and around the 1650's. So it's always nice to >>>> keep >>>> plodding away, hoping eventually something comes up. >>>> 2013 is a big year, 500 years since the Battle of Flodden, quite an >>>> event >>>> for the HUME family. I hope that you or someone, has this event in >>>> mind >>>> ready to publish details when they become available >>>> >>>> Thanks for your time >>>> regards >>>> John Hume >>> >>> ------------------------------- >>> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to >>> SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without >>> the >>> quotes in the subject and the body of the message >> >> ------------------------------- >> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to >> SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the >> quotes in the subject and the body of the message >> > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes in the subject and the body of the message ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Interesting as always Linda. We couldn't find my husbands grandfathers birth in Londonderry nor the previous two siblings anywhere but had the none elder ones from Presbyterian Church records Donegal no problem as Irwin. The last three children were born elsewhere and even in 1890 to 1896 were written down as Irvine. This triggered a memory in one of the older members of the family - apparently this caused untold issues with an emigration to America in 1924 because his birth certificate had a different surname to that he used ie Irwin like the rest of the family! So yes, we also learnt always check variants - I had to pay an Irish genealogist to learn my lesson!! Regards Donna Sent from my iPhone On 13 Dec 2011, at 15:19, lmerle@comcast.net wrote: > Hi John, unfortunately your logic (that you and your father, etc) always spelled the name the same, makes a couple assumptions that cannot be proven. > > They are: > -- that the past was just like the present. In other words that spelling mattered. Actually our English and Scots ancestors were a bit behind other parts of Europe, like the future German speaking countries. They had standardized spelling a lot earlier than English. If you go back three hundred years you will find many many variant spellings in published materials by highly educated people. That is because spelling was phonetic. One spelled a word as one heard it. Though sometimes people spelled it many different ways, maybe to be creative? Who knows? > > -- In the past people didn't go to school so they couldn't spell right or wrong. Granted, illiteracy rates in England, which are better documented than in other British countries, have been low for the last 300 or so years. I am recalling what Michael Gandy (a leading British genealogist) said in a lecture, in which he gave actual statistics. However most people attended until early teen years, at most, and then rarely used it. They didn't read newspapers. In fact many times they signed baptisms and marriage records with an X because to actually write your name was very uppity and it could have cost them to step out of rank. So many times signing your name with an X does not indicate illiteracy, at least in the UK. In 1830 in the hills of Tennessee -- now that's another matter entirely. > > -- If the ancestor was of a class where writing names was permitted, and always if he were not, often a clerk wrote the name down. This was a clerk who lacked the concept of standardized spelling of any words. Before that, a scribe. If you check the parish records, you will see that they were written by one person for some length of time -- a clerk or even the minister. The ancestor did NOT sign his name, such as one would do today. The clerk wrote it down. If the clerk or minister certainly didn't ask a commoner how to spell his name. First of all the working man was ignorant and probably had no idea how to do that, in the clerk's opinion. The clerk had several ways of spelling the name and just did it. It would certainly have been very very unBritish for a literate, middle class clerk to ask a working man how to spell his name. It would certainly be unheard of for a farmer or carpenter, etc, to correct a clerk's spelling. Whether this worked for merchants and above, I do! not know. I guess I'll have to ask Michael Gandy, who researched this. > > ---The clerk wrote the name down phonetically as he heard it. Now there used to be many, many many local accents in the UK. These are now disappearing due to mass media, however even today, most of the rest of us cannot understand a Geordie and people in Belfast find the native of Ballymena incomprehensible. It is very possible for a clerk or taxman from even twenty miles away to hear a surname, pronounced in a local accent, 'differently' and to transcribe it differently than a local man would. > > So if you think your ancestors could either always read and write, were always permitted to give their opinion to the clerk of the parish and the king's men collecting taxes, etc, or that their pronunciation of their name was always correctly heard and correctly written down by all clerks, etc, whose records survive -- well then, I have a great bridge in Brooklyn that you might want to purchase cheap. > > Another wrinkle is that we do not know the local patois. We speak English, not Scots. Many Scots records were recorded in Scots. The earlier ones in Latin. One can find some very strange spellings when Scots or English names are written in Latin. > > -- I had another reason but have now forgotten it, like a standup comic with a list (Number 3: There is no number 3....). > > I've seen Hume as Home and I have definitely seen it as Hulme. The addition of an L simply indicates a minor difference in pronunciation, probably an Englishism. Earlier Scots records often spelled names like Simpson as Simson, indicating that the pronunciation didn't include an aspiration at the end of the first syllable. A little puff of air. The English love these things. They began creeping into lowland Scots records in the early 1800s -- at least in eastern Stirling. > > As family researchers, we usually do not study much. This works out okay -- it leaves work for our descendants to do, and since we aren't doing brain surgery though ill-prepared to do so, no one dies. Yet if we do 'git ejikated', one of the first things the teacher tries to pound into our thick skulls is that the first, the most common reason why we fail to bag our man is our failure to research surname variants. It look a few classes, many errors and backtracking, for me to learn this. My skull is pretty thick! However, duh, finally I realized it is generally true and I had to remember this. > > So I always do a number of things to seek out surname spelling variants when I start to research a name. Checking IGI is one. Another is looking the surname up in a good surname dictionary. Until the day comes when I've researched and published a few surname books myself, I have got to assume that the guys who wrote these books knew a tiny bit more than me. So maybe I should listen to them. I try hard to remember this <grin>. Where the screwups happen is the cases where I'm sure I know what the variants are or that there were none. That's when I screw up. > > I think the key to determining whether two names identified two different sets of people or the same ones is locale. Obviously, two spelling variants are more easily identified if suddenly the one variant is not present when the other is. Foreman, who wrote on "Old Mother" Cumberland, PA, the mother county for many of us, was confused over McCamey and McCamish, for example. However when I did a very careful study of the two, using records he probably couldn't so easily get, it was clear the McCameys were in Londonderry and the McCamish surname in Hamilton Twp. But it took some research to figure that out and a number of tables in Word. > > It's harder in the New World, I think, where there were more dialects and less education. People in a parish in the hills of Virginia, for example, could have come, and did come, from 'all over', not just Britain, but France, Germany, Holland, etc. Some were native speakers of the evolving local dialect. Others just hopped off the boat. In some cases you can find a man's surname spelled multiple ways in a deed or will (I've seen both). He didn't write the deed or will. The clerk did. Sometimes the only way to determine if there is one man or several is to seek out additional information, such as locale, associates, and his wife. > > For example there were two men named William McCarmack/McCarmish etc in Old Bedford County in the 1770s and 80s. One I was an Irish immigrant living on Little Wreck Island and one the son of Micajah McCarmack, whose place of residence I forget. However when about 1786 or so the county was divided up, one was still in Bedford (Micajah's son) and one was in the new Campbell County. That was the Irish immigrant because Little Wreck Island was in it. And when he split for Tennessee, only one appeared in the tax records for the area -- Micajah's son in Bedford. All these guys and several other families are indexed together in the deed book, court records (Micajah's family sued everyone, especially each other), and will book. Their surname spellings were entirely inconsistent and greatly varied. Sometimes the only way to tell which guy it was was by who he was suing or wheeling and dealing in land. Micajah's family endlessly did land deals, often with the Wrights, one of the lea! ding families of the area. The McCamish boys never seemed to have left their plot. Carriers of the M222 variant and late of Tyrone, they'd learned how to survive among the Proddy mackerels: keep the head down out of the line of fire. > > However probably the spelling represented how the clerk heard the name and so was phonetic. > > The other thing to remember is the vowels change fastest both in time and locale. So it's H*me, alas. You can put any vowel in there and it worked for someone. > > I have found names that do not tend to vary in spelling in old records. However that doesn't include my maiden name of Mayson, oops, Mazon, oops, Meeson, oops Mason (through 20 variants in Durham records). Which I found a little unbelievable <grin>. > > Reading Scots parish records, I did answer a nagging question: what's the difference between a Fish and a Fisher in Scots records? One parish clerk had kindly written: Fish (Fitch) for me. I believe the Fitch is an Englishism. You see a lot of things like this in the parish records that can clarify surname changes that we'd never think of, today, just because I do not live in an area where Scots is competing with English. And so I learned a Fish was not a Fisher who got circumcized. He was a different animal entirely. > > So if you do get 'stuck' somewhere in the past, revisit surname spelling variants. It might help. > > Linda Merle -- in cold but sunny Pennsylvania > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "john.hume" <john.hume@ntlworld.com> > To: scotch-irish@rootsweb.com > Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 5:05:35 AM > Subject: Re: [S-I] DNA Made Simple > > Many thanks Bill for your information. > This is one of the sticking points about surnames. As a HUME, I become very > 'cross' when people insist in putting an 'L' in the middle. Why HULME, as > far as I am concerned there is absolutely no connection. HULME is part of > Lancashire, Manchester etc, whereas HUME is Scottish, and of course spelt > HOME as well. Again in Scotland if you mention HUME or HOME they know > exactly how to spell it HUME. > > As with my cousin, TWEEDDALE is a family name and has never been spelt as > TWEEDALE, it's double U, double E and double T, any other variation is not > allowed. Although I do accept the spelling mistake in the 1881 census, it > may have been down to enumerator's interpretation. This is the only example > I can find of this error. However, has he has only two daughters, his branch > of this very small family group will now cease. > > Now I know it sounds silly for me to not except any of the variations of my > name, but when ever I am asked my name, I ALWAYS end it by spelling H.U.M.E. > out to the person. My father did the same. So is it a family trait that > unknowingly we have carried on?. When I started 25 years ago, I was able to > research my direct family, using just the IGI, straight back to 1720, this > took about three hours in total. I am then amazed at the difficultly that > 'famous/infamous' people seem to have problems even going back to the mid > 19th century. Maybe it was all due to the fact that my ancestors could read > and write, thereby ensuring the surname was spelt correctly, obviously I > don't know. > > Regarding the message about DNA in Ireland. I was in Belfast and Londonderry > from 1965 -67. I was serving in the Royal Navy and had some splendid 'runs > ashore' in both places, even got invited by a total stranger to a 21st > birthday bash in Carrickfergus, frightens the life out of me now just to > think about what may have happened. If I had known more about my Irish > connections at that time I may have spent more of my time there more > fruitfully. Now I'm thinking of going over next year, but obviously now > having to pay for the privilege. It is a great shame that religion still > plays a bit part over there. To me, it doesn't matter which religion you > are, it is how you behave. I have some excellent friends who are Muslims, I > treat them as they are my own brothers. By knowing them I understand their > own divides in their religion, if you think Ireland has it's problems, try > understanding the Muslims. > > As to having your DNA taken, I had mine done for one simple reason, I wish > to know if there are any other members of my own particular branch of the > HUMES out there. Paperwork becomes scarce before 1700, thereby, spending a > £100 on such an easy test, is very good value compared to spending money on > researching something which probably isn't even there. Also, once you > receive your DNA markers, you are updated everytime a connection is made > with your own DNA at all 4 points of markers. > > Well,I must be off, playing Santa again today. Only managed to upset five > children yesterday, must do better today. > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Bill Limebeer" <limebeer@SENTEX.CA> > To: <scotch-irish@rootsweb.com> > Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 7:52 PM > Subject: Re: [S-I] DNA Made Simple > > >> On 12/12/2011 1:27 PM, john.hume wrote: >> Hi John, >> you maybe interested to know that there are Tweedales living in the >> Province of New Brunswick Canada, One of whom I knew some years ago was >> a Judge at Burton New Brunswick >> Cheers >> Bill >> On.Can. >>> Thank you Sara, glad I made someone smile today. >>> >>> I understand what you are saying about the Irish accent it really is >>> difficult to understand. But for a real challenge you want to read the >>> Yorkshire Bible. Now that is an education. But on a serious note, accents >>> must have played a part in peoples names being entered on census sheets >>> incorrectly. One of my cousins,has the surname TWEEDDALE, couldn't >>> understand why he couldn't find his grandfather in the 1881 census. It >>> was >>> entered as TWIDALE, understandable of course >>> John >>> ----- Original Message ----- >>> From: "S. B. Mason"<sbmasonaz@cox.net> >>> To:<scotch-irish@rootsweb.com> >>> Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 5:54 PM >>> Subject: Re: [S-I] DNA Made Simple >>> >>> >>>> John, >>>> >>>> I had to laugh at your difficulty understanding Americans in films. My >>>> husband and I long ago resorted to using closed captions on British >>>> programs on US TV. My worst experience with communicating with people >>>> speaking a common language (English) was on a trip to Ireland and >>>> Northern Ireland with my hard-of-hearing brother. Since this was my >>>> third visit I was fairly proficient in understanding what was being >>>> said to me but I couldn't honestly say I understood every word but I'd >>>> usually understand the intent of what was being said. My brother, even >>>> when he could hear what was said, couldn't decipher the accent. So >>>> he'd turn to me and say, "WHAT DID THEY SAY?", and expect me to repeat >>>> it verbatim which, of course, I often couldn't do. Talk about >>>> embarrassing! >>>> >>>> Sara >>>> >>>> On Dec 12, 2011, at 9:39 AM, scotch-irish-request@rootsweb.com wrote: >>>> >>>>> >>>>> Today's Topics: >>>>> >>>>> 1. Re: DNA Made Simple (john.hume) >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >>>>> >>>>> Message: 1 >>>>> Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:39:05 -0000 >>>>> From: "john.hume"<john.hume@ntlworld.com> >>>>> Subject: Re: [S-I] DNA Made Simple >>>>> To:<scotch-irish@rootsweb.com> >>>>> Message-ID:<8ABED21AA179428687D830F272431AE5@GRUMPYPC> >>>>> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; >>>>> reply-type=original >>>>> >>>>> Hi Linda, >>>>> >>>>> Sorry I didn't send my condolences over your father's death, I must >>>>> have >>>>> missed that message. I lost my own father 3 years this Christmas >>>>> Eve, he was >>>>> 92 and as he served 12 years in the army and was in the Burmese jungle >>>>> fighting the Japanese, I suppose we are lucky to have had him that >>>>> long. >>>>> As for cats, what can I say, our six month old moggie, jumped off >>>>> the hedge, >>>>> cracked her jaw straight in halve as she landed on a brick edge. >>>>> Result over >>>>> ?1,000 in vets fees. She was too young and too nice to be put down, >>>>> now I've >>>>> taken out pet insurance. >>>>> Going back to WDYTYA, our programme is 1 hour long, and as on the >>>>> BBC there >>>>> are no commercial adverts. The USA ones are shown on the BBC >>>>> channels and no >>>>> adverts either but still only 30 minutes long, so I don't think the >>>>> people >>>>> over there are getting their money's worth. Do you have the voice of >>>>> Mark >>>>> Strong as the narrator. ?. Last week's 'celebrity' was an American >>>>> comedienne, her family had originated from County Kildare in >>>>> Ireland, a >>>>> great shame they only spent about 5 minutes in that country before >>>>> she and >>>>> her brother retired to the pub. I certainly agree with the words OMG >>>>> and >>>>> WOW, my problem of late is trying to decipher what some Americans are >>>>> actually saying.Films in particular are becoming very difficult to >>>>> understand, and there was silly me thinking that we all spoke English. >>>>> >>>>> I've had some interesting e-mails from over your way regarding the >>>>> family >>>>> of Conway and Hume in and around the 1650's. So it's always nice to >>>>> keep >>>>> plodding away, hoping eventually something comes up. >>>>> 2013 is a big year, 500 years since the Battle of Flodden, quite an >>>>> event >>>>> for the HUME family. I hope that you or someone, has this event in >>>>> mind >>>>> ready to publish details when they become available >>>>> >>>>> Thanks for your time >>>>> regards >>>>> John Hume >>>> >>>> ------------------------------- >>>> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to >>>> SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without >>>> the >>>> quotes in the subject and the body of the message >>> >>> ------------------------------- >>> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to >>> SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the >>> quotes in the subject and the body of the message >>> >> >> >> ------------------------------- >> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to >> SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the >> quotes in the subject and the body of the message > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Hi Donna, you reminded me of a horror story I heard about someone tracing an ancestor back to a parish in Ireland. However after a generation or so the name was not in the parish records. Apparently he did some research and learned that, as sometimes happens, everyone in the area ended up with the same last name. So a number of them chose new ones one day. I was helping a guy get Irish citizenship a little while ago. Easy, right? His grandparents left Ireland. He had marriage in the USA of the grandparents that gave the names of their parents and the counties of origin. However there was no sign of grandpa in his county. You can get access to the indexes, etc, of the Irish civil registration free at www.familysearch.org . No sign of grandpa anywhere. So apparently grandpa didn't exist. However grandma did. I was able to find her birth record and establish that no one with her name was married or died in Ireland. So he did become a citizen. Grandpa still is on the lam. Some one was looking for grandpa. The surname he chose to use is found in his county and is uncommon, so I expect he adapted another family name, maybe his mother's maiden name. He could have so easily become "John Murphy" but he didn't. He's not the only fellow whose ancestors changed their surname on arrival. And as my late mother used to say "Many people changed their religion on the boat." Don't know how she figured that one out <grin>. Linda Merle ----- Original Message ----- From: "Donnalangbank" <donnalangbank@aol.com> To: scotch-irish@rootsweb.com Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 10:37:48 AM Subject: Re: [S-I] DNA Made Simple Interesting as always Linda. We couldn't find my husbands grandfathers birth in Londonderry nor the previous two siblings anywhere but had the none elder ones from Presbyterian Church records Donegal no problem as Irwin. The last three children were born elsewhere and even in 1890 to 1896 were written down as Irvine. This triggered a memory in one of the older members of the family - apparently this caused untold issues with an emigration to America in 1924 because his birth certificate had a different surname to that he used ie Irwin like the rest of the family! So yes, we also learnt always check variants - I had to pay an Irish genealogist to learn my lesson!! Regards Donna Sent from my iPhone On 13 Dec 2011, at 15:19, lmerle@comcast.net wrote: > Hi John, unfortunately your logic (that you and your father, etc) always spelled the name the same, makes a couple assumptions that cannot be proven. > > They are: > -- that the past was just like the present. In other words that spelling mattered. Actually our English and Scots ancestors were a bit behind other parts of Europe, like the future German speaking countries. They had standardized spelling a lot earlier than English. If you go back three hundred years you will find many many variant spellings in published materials by highly educated people. That is because spelling was phonetic. One spelled a word as one heard it. Though sometimes people spelled it many different ways, maybe to be creative? Who knows? > > -- In the past people didn't go to school so they couldn't spell right or wrong. Granted, illiteracy rates in England, which are better documented than in other British countries, have been low for the last 300 or so years. I am recalling what Michael Gandy (a leading British genealogist) said in a lecture, in which he gave actual statistics. However most people attended until early teen years, at most, and then rarely used it. They didn't read newspapers. In fact many times they signed baptisms and marriage records with an X because to actually write your name was very uppity and it could have cost them to step out of rank. So many times signing your name with an X does not indicate illiteracy, at least in the UK. In 1830 in the hills of Tennessee -- now that's another matter entirely. > > -- If the ancestor was of a class where writing names was permitted, and always if he were not, often a clerk wrote the name down. This was a clerk who lacked the concept of standardized spelling of any words. Before that, a scribe. If you check the parish records, you will see that they were written by one person for some length of time -- a clerk or even the minister. The ancestor did NOT sign his name, such as one would do today. The clerk wrote it down. If the clerk or minister certainly didn't ask a commoner how to spell his name. First of all the working man was ignorant and probably had no idea how to do that, in the clerk's opinion. The clerk had several ways of spelling the name and just did it. It would certainly have been very very unBritish for a literate, middle class clerk to ask a working man how to spell his name. It would certainly be unheard of for a farmer or carpenter, etc, to correct a clerk's spelling. Whether this worked for merchants and above, I do not know. I guess I'll have to ask Michael Gandy, who researched this. > > ---The clerk wrote the name down phonetically as he heard it. Now there used to be many, many many local accents in the UK. These are now disappearing due to mass media, however even today, most of the rest of us cannot understand a Geordie and people in Belfast find the native of Ballymena incomprehensible. It is very possible for a clerk or taxman from even twenty miles away to hear a surname, pronounced in a local accent, 'differently' and to transcribe it differently than a local man would. > > So if you think your ancestors could either always read and write, were always permitted to give their opinion to the clerk of the parish and the king's men collecting taxes, etc, or that their pronunciation of their name was always correctly heard and correctly written down by all clerks, etc, whose records survive -- well then, I have a great bridge in Brooklyn that you might want to purchase cheap. > > Another wrinkle is that we do not know the local patois. We speak English, not Scots. Many Scots records were recorded in Scots. The earlier ones in Latin. One can find some very strange spellings when Scots or English names are written in Latin. > > -- I had another reason but have now forgotten it, like a standup comic with a list (Number 3: There is no number 3....). > > I've seen Hume as Home and I have definitely seen it as Hulme. The addition of an L simply indicates a minor difference in pronunciation, probably an Englishism. Earlier Scots records often spelled names like Simpson as Simson, indicating that the pronunciation didn't include an aspiration at the end of the first syllable. A little puff of air. The English love these things. They began creeping into lowland Scots records in the early 1800s -- at least in eastern Stirling. > > As family researchers, we usually do not study much. This works out okay -- it leaves work for our descendants to do, and since we aren't doing brain surgery though ill-prepared to do so, no one dies. Yet if we do 'git ejikated', one of the first things the teacher tries to pound into our thick skulls is that the first, the most common reason why we fail to bag our man is our failure to research surname variants. It look a few classes, many errors and backtracking, for me to learn this. My skull is pretty thick! However, duh, finally I realized it is generally true and I had to remember this. > > So I always do a number of things to seek out surname spelling variants when I start to research a name. Checking IGI is one. Another is looking the surname up in a good surname dictionary. Until the day comes when I've researched and published a few surname books myself, I have got to assume that the guys who wrote these books knew a tiny bit more than me. So maybe I should listen to them. I try hard to remember this <grin>. Where the screwups happen is the cases where I'm sure I know what the variants are or that there were none. That's when I screw up. > > I think the key to determining whether two names identified two different sets of people or the same ones is locale. Obviously, two spelling variants are more easily identified if suddenly the one variant is not present when the other is. Foreman, who wrote on "Old Mother" Cumberland, PA, the mother county for many of us, was confused over McCamey and McCamish, for example. However when I did a very careful study of the two, using records he probably couldn't so easily get, it was clear the McCameys were in Londonderry and the McCamish surname in Hamilton Twp. But it took some research to figure that out and a number of tables in Word. > > It's harder in the New World, I think, where there were more dialects and less education. People in a parish in the hills of Virginia, for example, could have come, and did come, from 'all over', not just Britain, but France, Germany, Holland, etc. Some were native speakers of the evolving local dialect. Others just hopped off the boat. In some cases you can find a man's surname spelled multiple ways in a deed or will (I've seen both). He didn't write the deed or will. The clerk did. Sometimes the only way to determine if there is one man or several is to seek out additional information, such as locale, associates, and his wife. > > For example there were two men named William McCarmack/McCarmish etc in Old Bedford County in the 1770s and 80s. One I was an Irish immigrant living on Little Wreck Island and one the son of Micajah McCarmack, whose place of residence I forget. However when about 1786 or so the county was divided up, one was still in Bedford (Micajah's son) and one was in the new Campbell County. That was the Irish immigrant because Little Wreck Island was in it. And when he split for Tennessee, only one appeared in the tax records for the area -- Micajah's son in Bedford. All these guys and several other families are indexed together in the deed book, court records (Micajah's family sued everyone, especially each other), and will book. Their surname spellings were entirely inconsistent and greatly varied. Sometimes the only way to tell which guy it was was by who he was suing or wheeling and dealing in land. Micajah's family endlessly did land deals, often with the Wrights, one of the leading families of the area. The McCamish boys never seemed to have left their plot. Carriers of the M222 variant and late of Tyrone, they'd learned how to survive among the Proddy mackerels: keep the head down out of the line of fire. > > However probably the spelling represented how the clerk heard the name and so was phonetic. > > The other thing to remember is the vowels change fastest both in time and locale. So it's H*me, alas. You can put any vowel in there and it worked for someone. > > I have found names that do not tend to vary in spelling in old records. However that doesn't include my maiden name of Mayson, oops, Mazon, oops, Meeson, oops Mason (through 20 variants in Durham records). Which I found a little unbelievable <grin>. > > Reading Scots parish records, I did answer a nagging question: what's the difference between a Fish and a Fisher in Scots records? One parish clerk had kindly written: Fish (Fitch) for me. I believe the Fitch is an Englishism. You see a lot of things like this in the parish records that can clarify surname changes that we'd never think of, today, just because I do not live in an area where Scots is competing with English. And so I learned a Fish was not a Fisher who got circumcized. He was a different animal entirely. > > So if you do get 'stuck' somewhere in the past, revisit surname spelling variants. It might help. > > Linda Merle -- in cold but sunny Pennsylvania > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "john.hume" <john.hume@ntlworld.com> > To: scotch-irish@rootsweb.com > Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 5:05:35 AM > Subject: Re: [S-I] DNA Made Simple > > Many thanks Bill for your information. > This is one of the sticking points about surnames. As a HUME, I become very > 'cross' when people insist in putting an 'L' in the middle. Why HULME, as > far as I am concerned there is absolutely no connection. HULME is part of > Lancashire, Manchester etc, whereas HUME is Scottish, and of course spelt > HOME as well. Again in Scotland if you mention HUME or HOME they know > exactly how to spell it HUME. > > As with my cousin, TWEEDDALE is a family name and has never been spelt as > TWEEDALE, it's double U, double E and double T, any other variation is not > allowed. Although I do accept the spelling mistake in the 1881 census, it > may have been down to enumerator's interpretation. This is the only example > I can find of this error. However, has he has only two daughters, his branch > of this very small family group will now cease. > > Now I know it sounds silly for me to not except any of the variations of my > name, but when ever I am asked my name, I ALWAYS end it by spelling H.U.M.E. > out to the person. My father did the same. So is it a family trait that > unknowingly we have carried on?. When I started 25 years ago, I was able to > research my direct family, using just the IGI, straight back to 1720, this > took about three hours in total. I am then amazed at the difficultly that > 'famous/infamous' people seem to have problems even going back to the mid > 19th century. Maybe it was all due to the fact that my ancestors could read > and write, thereby ensuring the surname was spelt correctly, obviously I > don't know. > > Regarding the message about DNA in Ireland. I was in Belfast and Londonderry > from 1965 -67. I was serving in the Royal Navy and had some splendid 'runs > ashore' in both places, even got invited by a total stranger to a 21st > birthday bash in Carrickfergus, frightens the life out of me now just to > think about what may have happened. If I had known more about my Irish > connections at that time I may have spent more of my time there more > fruitfully. Now I'm thinking of going over next year, but obviously now > having to pay for the privilege. It is a great shame that religion still > plays a bit part over there. To me, it doesn't matter which religion you > are, it is how you behave. I have some excellent friends who are Muslims, I > treat them as they are my own brothers. By knowing them I understand their > own divides in their religion, if you think Ireland has it's problems, try > understanding the Muslims. > > As to having your DNA taken, I had mine done for one simple reason, I wish > to know if there are any other members of my own particular branch of the > HUMES out there. Paperwork becomes scarce before 1700, thereby, spending a > £100 on such an easy test, is very good value compared to spending money on > researching something which probably isn't even there. Also, once you > receive your DNA markers, you are updated everytime a connection is made > with your own DNA at all 4 points of markers. > > Well,I must be off, playing Santa again today. Only managed to upset five > children yesterday, must do better today. > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Bill Limebeer" <limebeer@SENTEX.CA> > To: <scotch-irish@rootsweb.com> > Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 7:52 PM > Subject: Re: [S-I] DNA Made Simple > > >> On 12/12/2011 1:27 PM, john.hume wrote: >> Hi John, >> you maybe interested to know that there are Tweedales living in the >> Province of New Brunswick Canada, One of whom I knew some years ago was >> a Judge at Burton New Brunswick >> Cheers >> Bill >> On.Can. >>> Thank you Sara, glad I made someone smile today. >>> >>> I understand what you are saying about the Irish accent it really is >>> difficult to understand. But for a real challenge you want to read the >>> Yorkshire Bible. Now that is an education. But on a serious note, accents >>> must have played a part in peoples names being entered on census sheets >>> incorrectly. One of my cousins,has the surname TWEEDDALE, couldn't >>> understand why he couldn't find his grandfather in the 1881 census. It >>> was >>> entered as TWIDALE, understandable of course >>> John >>> ----- Original Message ----- >>> From: "S. B. Mason"<sbmasonaz@cox.net> >>> To:<scotch-irish@rootsweb.com> >>> Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 5:54 PM >>> Subject: Re: [S-I] DNA Made Simple >>> >>> >>>> John, >>>> >>>> I had to laugh at your difficulty understanding Americans in films. My >>>> husband and I long ago resorted to using closed captions on British >>>> programs on US TV. My worst experience with communicating with people >>>> speaking a common language (English) was on a trip to Ireland and >>>> Northern Ireland with my hard-of-hearing brother. Since this was my >>>> third visit I was fairly proficient in understanding what was being >>>> said to me but I couldn't honestly say I understood every word but I'd >>>> usually understand the intent of what was being said. My brother, even >>>> when he could hear what was said, couldn't decipher the accent. So >>>> he'd turn to me and say, "WHAT DID THEY SAY?", and expect me to repeat >>>> it verbatim which, of course, I often couldn't do. Talk about >>>> embarrassing! >>>> >>>> Sara >>>> >>>> On Dec 12, 2011, at 9:39 AM, scotch-irish-request@rootsweb.com wrote: >>>> >>>>> >>>>> Today's Topics: >>>>> >>>>> 1. Re: DNA Made Simple (john.hume) >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >>>>> >>>>> Message: 1 >>>>> Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:39:05 -0000 >>>>> From: "john.hume"<john.hume@ntlworld.com> >>>>> Subject: Re: [S-I] DNA Made Simple >>>>> To:<scotch-irish@rootsweb.com> >>>>> Message-ID:<8ABED21AA179428687D830F272431AE5@GRUMPYPC> >>>>> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; >>>>> reply-type=original >>>>> >>>>> Hi Linda, >>>>> >>>>> Sorry I didn't send my condolences over your father's death, I must >>>>> have >>>>> missed that message. I lost my own father 3 years this Christmas >>>>> Eve, he was >>>>> 92 and as he served 12 years in the army and was in the Burmese jungle >>>>> fighting the Japanese, I suppose we are lucky to have had him that >>>>> long. >>>>> As for cats, what can I say, our six month old moggie, jumped off >>>>> the hedge, >>>>> cracked her jaw straight in halve as she landed on a brick edge. >>>>> Result over >>>>> ?1,000 in vets fees. She was too young and too nice to be put down, >>>>> now I've >>>>> taken out pet insurance. >>>>> Going back to WDYTYA, our programme is 1 hour long, and as on the >>>>> BBC there >>>>> are no commercial adverts. The USA ones are shown on the BBC >>>>> channels and no >>>>> adverts either but still only 30 minutes long, so I don't think the >>>>> people >>>>> over there are getting their money's worth. Do you have the voice of >>>>> Mark >>>>> Strong as the narrator. ?. Last week's 'celebrity' was an American >>>>> comedienne, her family had originated from County Kildare in >>>>> Ireland, a >>>>> great shame they only spent about 5 minutes in that country before >>>>> she and >>>>> her brother retired to the pub. I certainly agree with the words OMG >>>>> and >>>>> WOW, my problem of late is trying to decipher what some Americans are >>>>> actually saying.Films in particular are becoming very difficult to >>>>> understand, and there was silly me thinking that we all spoke English. >>>>> >>>>> I've had some interesting e-mails from over your way regarding the >>>>> family >>>>> of Conway and Hume in and around the 1650's. So it's always nice to >>>>> keep >>>>> plodding away, hoping eventually something comes up. >>>>> 2013 is a big year, 500 years since the Battle of Flodden, quite an >>>>> event >>>>> for the HUME family. I hope that you or someone, has this event in >>>>> mind >>>>> ready to publish details when they become available >>>>> >>>>> Thanks for your time >>>>> regards >>>>> John Hume >>>> >>>> ------------------------------- >>>> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to >>>> SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without >>>> the >>>> quotes in the subject and the body of the message >>> >>> ------------------------------- >>> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to >>> SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the >>> quotes in the subject and the body of the message >>> >> >> >> ------------------------------- >> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to >> SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the >> quotes in the subject and the body of the message > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Fascinating as ever, Linda! Re your mothers comment - my husbands family changed nationality on the boat! They were Ulster Scots from Donegal, moving to join other family in Scotland in 1911 ie around partition. When they went from Scotland to the USA they put their nationality as Scottish on the ships manifest - as Ulster Scots they did not want to be associated with the Southern Irish. Apparently this was quite common but they did still list religion as Presbyterian - and very strict at that ! Donna Sent from my iPhone On 13 Dec 2011, at 16:06, lmerle@comcast.net wrote: > Hi Donna, you reminded me of a horror story I heard about someone tracing an ancestor back to a parish in Ireland. However after a generation or so the name was not in the parish records. Apparently he did some research and learned that, as sometimes happens, everyone in the area ended up with the same last name. So a number of them chose new ones one day. > > I was helping a guy get Irish citizenship a little while ago. Easy, right? His grandparents left Ireland. He had marriage in the USA of the grandparents that gave the names of their parents and the counties of origin. However there was no sign of grandpa in his county. You can get access to the indexes, etc, of the Irish civil registration free at www.familysearch.org . No sign of grandpa anywhere. So apparently grandpa didn't exist. However grandma did. I was able to find her birth record and establish that no one with her name was married or died in Ireland. So he did become a citizen. Grandpa still is on the lam. Some one was looking for grandpa. The surname he chose to use is found in his county and is uncommon, so I expect he adapted another family name, maybe his mother's maiden name. He could have so easily become "John Murphy" but he didn't. He's not the only fellow whose ancestors changed their surname on arrival. > > And as my late mother used to say "Many people changed their religion on the boat." Don't know how she figured that one out <grin>. > > Linda Merle > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Donnalangbank" <donnalangbank@aol.com> > To: scotch-irish@rootsweb.com > Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 10:37:48 AM > Subject: Re: [S-I] DNA Made Simple > > Interesting as always Linda. We couldn't find my husbands grandfathers birth in Londonderry nor the previous two siblings anywhere but had the none elder ones from Presbyterian Church records Donegal no problem as Irwin. The last three children were born elsewhere and even in 1890 to 1896 were written down as Irvine. > This triggered a memory in one of the older members of the family - apparently this caused untold issues with an emigration to America in 1924 because his birth certificate had a different surname to that he used ie Irwin like the rest of the family! > > So yes, we also learnt always check variants - I had to pay an Irish genealogist to learn my lesson!! > > Regards > Donna > > Sent from my iPhone > > On 13 Dec 2011, at 15:19, lmerle@comcast.net wrote: > >> Hi John, unfortunately your logic (that you and your father, etc) always spelled the name the same, makes a couple assumptions that cannot be proven. >> >> They are: >> -- that the past was just like the present. In other words that spelling mattered. Actually our English and Scots ancestors were a bit behind other parts of Europe, like the future German speaking countries. They had standardized spelling a lot earlier than English. If you go back three hundred years you will find many many variant spellings in published materials by highly educated people. That is because spelling was phonetic. One spelled a word as one heard it. Though sometimes people spelled it many different ways, maybe to be creative? Who knows? >> >> -- In the past people didn't go to school so they couldn't spell right or wrong. Granted, illiteracy rates in England, which are better documented than in other British countries, have been low for the last 300 or so years. I am recalling what Michael Gandy (a leading British genealogist) said in a lecture, in which he gave actual statistics. However most people attended until early teen years, at most, and then rarely used it. They didn't read newspapers. In fact many times they signed baptisms and marriage records with an X because to actually write your name was very uppity and it could have cost them to step out of rank. So many times signing your name with an X does not indicate illiteracy, at least in the UK. In 1830 in the hills of Tennessee -- now that's another matter entirely. >> >> -- If the ancestor was of a class where writing names was permitted, and always if he were not, often a clerk wrote the name down. This was a clerk who lacked the concept of standardized spelling of any words. Before that, a scribe. If you check the parish records, you will see that they were written by one person for some length of time -- a clerk or even the minister. The ancestor did NOT sign his name, such as one would do today. The clerk wrote it down. If the clerk or minister certainly didn't ask a commoner how to spell his name. First of all the working man was ignorant and probably had no idea how to do that, in the clerk's opinion. The clerk had several ways of spelling the name and just did it. It would certainly have been very very unBritish for a literate, middle class clerk to ask a working man how to spell his name. It would certainly be unheard of for a farmer or carpenter, etc, to correct a clerk's spelling. Whether this worked for merchants and above, I d! o not know. I guess I'll have to ask Michael Gandy, who researched this. >> >> ---The clerk wrote the name down phonetically as he heard it. Now there used to be many, many many local accents in the UK. These are now disappearing due to mass media, however even today, most of the rest of us cannot understand a Geordie and people in Belfast find the native of Ballymena incomprehensible. It is very possible for a clerk or taxman from even twenty miles away to hear a surname, pronounced in a local accent, 'differently' and to transcribe it differently than a local man would. >> >> So if you think your ancestors could either always read and write, were always permitted to give their opinion to the clerk of the parish and the king's men collecting taxes, etc, or that their pronunciation of their name was always correctly heard and correctly written down by all clerks, etc, whose records survive -- well then, I have a great bridge in Brooklyn that you might want to purchase cheap. >> >> Another wrinkle is that we do not know the local patois. We speak English, not Scots. Many Scots records were recorded in Scots. The earlier ones in Latin. One can find some very strange spellings when Scots or English names are written in Latin. >> >> -- I had another reason but have now forgotten it, like a standup comic with a list (Number 3: There is no number 3....). >> >> I've seen Hume as Home and I have definitely seen it as Hulme. The addition of an L simply indicates a minor difference in pronunciation, probably an Englishism. Earlier Scots records often spelled names like Simpson as Simson, indicating that the pronunciation didn't include an aspiration at the end of the first syllable. A little puff of air. The English love these things. They began creeping into lowland Scots records in the early 1800s -- at least in eastern Stirling. >> >> As family researchers, we usually do not study much. This works out okay -- it leaves work for our descendants to do, and since we aren't doing brain surgery though ill-prepared to do so, no one dies. Yet if we do 'git ejikated', one of the first things the teacher tries to pound into our thick skulls is that the first, the most common reason why we fail to bag our man is our failure to research surname variants. It look a few classes, many errors and backtracking, for me to learn this. My skull is pretty thick! However, duh, finally I realized it is generally true and I had to remember this. >> >> So I always do a number of things to seek out surname spelling variants when I start to research a name. Checking IGI is one. Another is looking the surname up in a good surname dictionary. Until the day comes when I've researched and published a few surname books myself, I have got to assume that the guys who wrote these books knew a tiny bit more than me. So maybe I should listen to them. I try hard to remember this <grin>. Where the screwups happen is the cases where I'm sure I know what the variants are or that there were none. That's when I screw up. >> >> I think the key to determining whether two names identified two different sets of people or the same ones is locale. Obviously, two spelling variants are more easily identified if suddenly the one variant is not present when the other is. Foreman, who wrote on "Old Mother" Cumberland, PA, the mother county for many of us, was confused over McCamey and McCamish, for example. However when I did a very careful study of the two, using records he probably couldn't so easily get, it was clear the McCameys were in Londonderry and the McCamish surname in Hamilton Twp. But it took some research to figure that out and a number of tables in Word. >> >> It's harder in the New World, I think, where there were more dialects and less education. People in a parish in the hills of Virginia, for example, could have come, and did come, from 'all over', not just Britain, but France, Germany, Holland, etc. Some were native speakers of the evolving local dialect. Others just hopped off the boat. In some cases you can find a man's surname spelled multiple ways in a deed or will (I've seen both). He didn't write the deed or will. The clerk did. Sometimes the only way to determine if there is one man or several is to seek out additional information, such as locale, associates, and his wife. >> >> For example there were two men named William McCarmack/McCarmish etc in Old Bedford County in the 1770s and 80s. One I was an Irish immigrant living on Little Wreck Island and one the son of Micajah McCarmack, whose place of residence I forget. However when about 1786 or so the county was divided up, one was still in Bedford (Micajah's son) and one was in the new Campbell County. That was the Irish immigrant because Little Wreck Island was in it. And when he split for Tennessee, only one appeared in the tax records for the area -- Micajah's son in Bedford. All these guys and several other families are indexed together in the deed book, court records (Micajah's family sued everyone, especially each other), and will book. Their surname spellings were entirely inconsistent and greatly varied. Sometimes the only way to tell which guy it was was by who he was suing or wheeling and dealing in land. Micajah's family endlessly did land deals, often with the Wrights, one of the le! ading families of the area. The McCamish boys never seemed to have left their plot. Carriers of the M222 variant and late of Tyrone, they'd learned how to survive among the Proddy mackerels: keep the head down out of the line of fire. >> >> However probably the spelling represented how the clerk heard the name and so was phonetic. >> >> The other thing to remember is the vowels change fastest both in time and locale. So it's H*me, alas. You can put any vowel in there and it worked for someone. >> >> I have found names that do not tend to vary in spelling in old records. However that doesn't include my maiden name of Mayson, oops, Mazon, oops, Meeson, oops Mason (through 20 variants in Durham records). Which I found a little unbelievable <grin>. >> >> Reading Scots parish records, I did answer a nagging question: what's the difference between a Fish and a Fisher in Scots records? One parish clerk had kindly written: Fish (Fitch) for me. I believe the Fitch is an Englishism. You see a lot of things like this in the parish records that can clarify surname changes that we'd never think of, today, just because I do not live in an area where Scots is competing with English. And so I learned a Fish was not a Fisher who got circumcized. He was a different animal entirely. >> >> So if you do get 'stuck' somewhere in the past, revisit surname spelling variants. It might help. >> >> Linda Merle -- in cold but sunny Pennsylvania >> >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: "john.hume" <john.hume@ntlworld.com> >> To: scotch-irish@rootsweb.com >> Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 5:05:35 AM >> Subject: Re: [S-I] DNA Made Simple >> >> Many thanks Bill for your information. >> This is one of the sticking points about surnames. As a HUME, I become very >> 'cross' when people insist in putting an 'L' in the middle. Why HULME, as >> far as I am concerned there is absolutely no connection. HULME is part of >> Lancashire, Manchester etc, whereas HUME is Scottish, and of course spelt >> HOME as well. Again in Scotland if you mention HUME or HOME they know >> exactly how to spell it HUME. >> >> As with my cousin, TWEEDDALE is a family name and has never been spelt as >> TWEEDALE, it's double U, double E and double T, any other variation is not >> allowed. Although I do accept the spelling mistake in the 1881 census, it >> may have been down to enumerator's interpretation. This is the only example >> I can find of this error. However, has he has only two daughters, his branch >> of this very small family group will now cease. >> >> Now I know it sounds silly for me to not except any of the variations of my >> name, but when ever I am asked my name, I ALWAYS end it by spelling H.U.M.E. >> out to the person. My father did the same. So is it a family trait that >> unknowingly we have carried on?. When I started 25 years ago, I was able to >> research my direct family, using just the IGI, straight back to 1720, this >> took about three hours in total. I am then amazed at the difficultly that >> 'famous/infamous' people seem to have problems even going back to the mid >> 19th century. Maybe it was all due to the fact that my ancestors could read >> and write, thereby ensuring the surname was spelt correctly, obviously I >> don't know. >> >> Regarding the message about DNA in Ireland. I was in Belfast and Londonderry >> from 1965 -67. I was serving in the Royal Navy and had some splendid 'runs >> ashore' in both places, even got invited by a total stranger to a 21st >> birthday bash in Carrickfergus, frightens the life out of me now just to >> think about what may have happened. If I had known more about my Irish >> connections at that time I may have spent more of my time there more >> fruitfully. Now I'm thinking of going over next year, but obviously now >> having to pay for the privilege. It is a great shame that religion still >> plays a bit part over there. To me, it doesn't matter which religion you >> are, it is how you behave. I have some excellent friends who are Muslims, I >> treat them as they are my own brothers. By knowing them I understand their >> own divides in their religion, if you think Ireland has it's problems, try >> understanding the Muslims. >> >> As to having your DNA taken, I had mine done for one simple reason, I wish >> to know if there are any other members of my own particular branch of the >> HUMES out there. Paperwork becomes scarce before 1700, thereby, spending a >> £100 on such an easy test, is very good value compared to spending money on >> researching something which probably isn't even there. Also, once you >> receive your DNA markers, you are updated everytime a connection is made >> with your own DNA at all 4 points of markers. >> >> Well,I must be off, playing Santa again today. Only managed to upset five >> children yesterday, must do better today. >> >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: "Bill Limebeer" <limebeer@SENTEX.CA> >> To: <scotch-irish@rootsweb.com> >> Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 7:52 PM >> Subject: Re: [S-I] DNA Made Simple >> >> >>> On 12/12/2011 1:27 PM, john.hume wrote: >>> Hi John, >>> you maybe interested to know that there are Tweedales living in the >>> Province of New Brunswick Canada, One of whom I knew some years ago was >>> a Judge at Burton New Brunswick >>> Cheers >>> Bill >>> On.Can. >>>> Thank you Sara, glad I made someone smile today. >>>> >>>> I understand what you are saying about the Irish accent it really is >>>> difficult to understand. But for a real challenge you want to read the >>>> Yorkshire Bible. Now that is an education. But on a serious note, accents >>>> must have played a part in peoples names being entered on census sheets >>>> incorrectly. One of my cousins,has the surname TWEEDDALE, couldn't >>>> understand why he couldn't find his grandfather in the 1881 census. It >>>> was >>>> entered as TWIDALE, understandable of course >>>> John >>>> ----- Original Message ----- >>>> From: "S. B. Mason"<sbmasonaz@cox.net> >>>> To:<scotch-irish@rootsweb.com> >>>> Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 5:54 PM >>>> Subject: Re: [S-I] DNA Made Simple >>>> >>>> >>>>> John, >>>>> >>>>> I had to laugh at your difficulty understanding Americans in films. My >>>>> husband and I long ago resorted to using closed captions on British >>>>> programs on US TV. My worst experience with communicating with people >>>>> speaking a common language (English) was on a trip to Ireland and >>>>> Northern Ireland with my hard-of-hearing brother. Since this was my >>>>> third visit I was fairly proficient in understanding what was being >>>>> said to me but I couldn't honestly say I understood every word but I'd >>>>> usually understand the intent of what was being said. My brother, even >>>>> when he could hear what was said, couldn't decipher the accent. So >>>>> he'd turn to me and say, "WHAT DID THEY SAY?", and expect me to repeat >>>>> it verbatim which, of course, I often couldn't do. Talk about >>>>> embarrassing! >>>>> >>>>> Sara >>>>> >>>>> On Dec 12, 2011, at 9:39 AM, scotch-irish-request@rootsweb.com wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Today's Topics: >>>>>> >>>>>> 1. Re: DNA Made Simple (john.hume) >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >>>>>> >>>>>> Message: 1 >>>>>> Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:39:05 -0000 >>>>>> From: "john.hume"<john.hume@ntlworld.com> >>>>>> Subject: Re: [S-I] DNA Made Simple >>>>>> To:<scotch-irish@rootsweb.com> >>>>>> Message-ID:<8ABED21AA179428687D830F272431AE5@GRUMPYPC> >>>>>> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; >>>>>> reply-type=original >>>>>> >>>>>> Hi Linda, >>>>>> >>>>>> Sorry I didn't send my condolences over your father's death, I must >>>>>> have >>>>>> missed that message. I lost my own father 3 years this Christmas >>>>>> Eve, he was >>>>>> 92 and as he served 12 years in the army and was in the Burmese jungle >>>>>> fighting the Japanese, I suppose we are lucky to have had him that >>>>>> long. >>>>>> As for cats, what can I say, our six month old moggie, jumped off >>>>>> the hedge, >>>>>> cracked her jaw straight in halve as she landed on a brick edge. >>>>>> Result over >>>>>> ?1,000 in vets fees. She was too young and too nice to be put down, >>>>>> now I've >>>>>> taken out pet insurance. >>>>>> Going back to WDYTYA, our programme is 1 hour long, and as on the >>>>>> BBC there >>>>>> are no commercial adverts. The USA ones are shown on the BBC >>>>>> channels and no >>>>>> adverts either but still only 30 minutes long, so I don't think the >>>>>> people >>>>>> over there are getting their money's worth. Do you have the voice of >>>>>> Mark >>>>>> Strong as the narrator. ?. Last week's 'celebrity' was an American >>>>>> comedienne, her family had originated from County Kildare in >>>>>> Ireland, a >>>>>> great shame they only spent about 5 minutes in that country before >>>>>> she and >>>>>> her brother retired to the pub. I certainly agree with the words OMG >>>>>> and >>>>>> WOW, my problem of late is trying to decipher what some Americans are >>>>>> actually saying.Films in particular are becoming very difficult to >>>>>> understand, and there was silly me thinking that we all spoke English. >>>>>> >>>>>> I've had some interesting e-mails from over your way regarding the >>>>>> family >>>>>> of Conway and Hume in and around the 1650's. So it's always nice to >>>>>> keep >>>>>> plodding away, hoping eventually something comes up. >>>>>> 2013 is a big year, 500 years since the Battle of Flodden, quite an >>>>>> event >>>>>> for the HUME family. I hope that you or someone, has this event in >>>>>> mind >>>>>> ready to publish details when they become available >>>>>> >>>>>> Thanks for your time >>>>>> regards >>>>>> John Hume >>>>> >>>>> ------------------------------- >>>>> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to >>>>> SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without >>>>> the >>>>> quotes in the subject and the body of the message >>>> >>>> ------------------------------- >>>> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to >>>> SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the >>>> quotes in the subject and the body of the message >>>> >>> >>> >>> ------------------------------- >>> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to >>> SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the >>> quotes in the subject and the body of the message >> >> >> ------------------------------- >> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >> >> ------------------------------- >> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Hi Donna, yes, I think changing your nationality got popular around the time of the Potato Famine. I've seen it too. Luckily we have excellent records in Scotland. If they don't turn up in some they were not in Scotland. If they weren't in England either, then they were most likely in Ireland. If they had been in Ireland and are now pretending to be Scots most likely they were in Ulster. Multiple migrations can complicate things: ie, Irish of whatever stripe who moved to Glasgow. If then moving to Australia or the USA, who knows what they'll say they were... Scots moving to Ireland -- same. It was hard to be consistent in the lies, so a through check of all the censuses and BMDs can sometimes uncover a crack in their cover story. In this day and age if no one can find them in Scotland in civil registration and censuses they got some explaining to do! My great grandmother was disinherited for marrying a Protestant Irishman (at least a second generation American) who was also a merchant. Of course her German relatives might have disinherited her if she married anything but a German Lutheran. His mother (from a line of Ulster Scots barracudas who owned 2000 acres near Pittsburgh after 1830) was disinherited for marrying a poor Irish Protestant whose da owned 4 acres till the Germans took it away from him. One thing we know about the Kellys: they were handsome men who attracted rich men's daughters. And it's hard to pretend you're not Irish when your surname is Kelly. Linda Merle ----- Original Message ----- From: "Donnalangbank" <donnalangbank@aol.com> To: scotch-irish@rootsweb.com Cc: scotch-irish@rootsweb.com Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 11:25:41 AM Subject: Re: [S-I] DNA Made Simple Fascinating as ever, Linda! Re your mothers comment - my husbands family changed nationality on the boat! They were Ulster Scots from Donegal, moving to join other family in Scotland in 1911 ie around partition. When they went from Scotland to the USA they put their nationality as Scottish on the ships manifest - as Ulster Scots they did not want to be associated with the Southern Irish. Apparently this was quite common but they did still list religion as Presbyterian - and very strict at that ! Donna Sent from my iPhone On 13 Dec 2011, at 16:06, lmerle@comcast.net wrote: > Hi Donna, you reminded me of a horror story I heard about someone tracing an ancestor back to a parish in Ireland. However after a generation or so the name was not in the parish records. Apparently he did some research and learned that, as sometimes happens, everyone in the area ended up with the same last name. So a number of them chose new ones one day. > > I was helping a guy get Irish citizenship a little while ago. Easy, right? His grandparents left Ireland. He had marriage in the USA of the grandparents that gave the names of their parents and the counties of origin. However there was no sign of grandpa in his county. You can get access to the indexes, etc, of the Irish civil registration free at www.familysearch.org . No sign of grandpa anywhere. So apparently grandpa didn't exist. However grandma did. I was able to find her birth record and establish that no one with her name was married or died in Ireland. So he did become a citizen. Grandpa still is on the lam. Some one was looking for grandpa. The surname he chose to use is found in his county and is uncommon, so I expect he adapted another family name, maybe his mother's maiden name. He could have so easily become "John Murphy" but he didn't. He's not the only fellow whose ancestors changed their surname on arrival. > > And as my late mother used to say "Many people changed their religion on the boat." Don't know how she figured that one out <grin>. > > Linda Merle > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Donnalangbank" <donnalangbank@aol.com> > To: scotch-irish@rootsweb.com > Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 10:37:48 AM > Subject: Re: [S-I] DNA Made Simple > > Interesting as always Linda. We couldn't find my husbands grandfathers birth in Londonderry nor the previous two siblings anywhere but had the none elder ones from Presbyterian Church records Donegal no problem as Irwin. The last three children were born elsewhere and even in 1890 to 1896 were written down as Irvine. > This triggered a memory in one of the older members of the family - apparently this caused untold issues with an emigration to America in 1924 because his birth certificate had a different surname to that he used ie Irwin like the rest of the family! > > So yes, we also learnt always check variants - I had to pay an Irish genealogist to learn my lesson!! > > Regards > Donna > > Sent from my iPhone > > On 13 Dec 2011, at 15:19, lmerle@comcast.net wrote: > >> Hi John, unfortunately your logic (that you and your father, etc) always spelled the name the same, makes a couple assumptions that cannot be proven. >> >> They are: >> -- that the past was just like the present. In other words that spelling mattered. Actually our English and Scots ancestors were a bit behind other parts of Europe, like the future German speaking countries. They had standardized spelling a lot earlier than English. If you go back three hundred years you will find many many variant spellings in published materials by highly educated people. That is because spelling was phonetic. One spelled a word as one heard it. Though sometimes people spelled it many different ways, maybe to be creative? Who knows? >> >> -- In the past people didn't go to school so they couldn't spell right or wrong. Granted, illiteracy rates in England, which are better documented than in other British countries, have been low for the last 300 or so years. I am recalling what Michael Gandy (a leading British genealogist) said in a lecture, in which he gave actual statistics. However most people attended until early teen years, at most, and then rarely used it. They didn't read newspapers. In fact many times they signed baptisms and marriage records with an X because to actually write your name was very uppity and it could have cost them to step out of rank. So many times signing your name with an X does not indicate illiteracy, at least in the UK. In 1830 in the hills of Tennessee -- now that's another matter entirely. >> >> -- If the ancestor was of a class where writing names was permitted, and always if he were not, often a clerk wrote the name down. This was a clerk who lacked the concept of standardized spelling of any words. Before that, a scribe. If you check the parish records, you will see that they were written by one person for some length of time -- a clerk or even the minister. The ancestor did NOT sign his name, such as one would do today. The clerk wrote it down. If the clerk or minister certainly didn't ask a commoner how to spell his name. First of all the working man was ignorant and probably had no idea how to do that, in the clerk's opinion. The clerk had several ways of spelling the name and just did it. It would certainly have been very very unBritish for a literate, middle class clerk to ask a working man how to spell his name. It would certainly be unheard of for a farmer or carpenter, etc, to correct a clerk's spelling. Whether this worked for merchants and above, I do not know. I guess I'll have to ask Michael Gandy, who researched this. >> >> ---The clerk wrote the name down phonetically as he heard it. Now there used to be many, many many local accents in the UK. These are now disappearing due to mass media, however even today, most of the rest of us cannot understand a Geordie and people in Belfast find the native of Ballymena incomprehensible. It is very possible for a clerk or taxman from even twenty miles away to hear a surname, pronounced in a local accent, 'differently' and to transcribe it differently than a local man would. >> >> So if you think your ancestors could either always read and write, were always permitted to give their opinion to the clerk of the parish and the king's men collecting taxes, etc, or that their pronunciation of their name was always correctly heard and correctly written down by all clerks, etc, whose records survive -- well then, I have a great bridge in Brooklyn that you might want to purchase cheap. >> >> Another wrinkle is that we do not know the local patois. We speak English, not Scots. Many Scots records were recorded in Scots. The earlier ones in Latin. One can find some very strange spellings when Scots or English names are written in Latin. >> >> -- I had another reason but have now forgotten it, like a standup comic with a list (Number 3: There is no number 3....). >> >> I've seen Hume as Home and I have definitely seen it as Hulme. The addition of an L simply indicates a minor difference in pronunciation, probably an Englishism. Earlier Scots records often spelled names like Simpson as Simson, indicating that the pronunciation didn't include an aspiration at the end of the first syllable. A little puff of air. The English love these things. They began creeping into lowland Scots records in the early 1800s -- at least in eastern Stirling. >> >> As family researchers, we usually do not study much. This works out okay -- it leaves work for our descendants to do, and since we aren't doing brain surgery though ill-prepared to do so, no one dies. Yet if we do 'git ejikated', one of the first things the teacher tries to pound into our thick skulls is that the first, the most common reason why we fail to bag our man is our failure to research surname variants. It look a few classes, many errors and backtracking, for me to learn this. My skull is pretty thick! However, duh, finally I realized it is generally true and I had to remember this. >> >> So I always do a number of things to seek out surname spelling variants when I start to research a name. Checking IGI is one. Another is looking the surname up in a good surname dictionary. Until the day comes when I've researched and published a few surname books myself, I have got to assume that the guys who wrote these books knew a tiny bit more than me. So maybe I should listen to them. I try hard to remember this <grin>. Where the screwups happen is the cases where I'm sure I know what the variants are or that there were none. That's when I screw up. >> >> I think the key to determining whether two names identified two different sets of people or the same ones is locale. Obviously, two spelling variants are more easily identified if suddenly the one variant is not present when the other is. Foreman, who wrote on "Old Mother" Cumberland, PA, the mother county for many of us, was confused over McCamey and McCamish, for example. However when I did a very careful study of the two, using records he probably couldn't so easily get, it was clear the McCameys were in Londonderry and the McCamish surname in Hamilton Twp. But it took some research to figure that out and a number of tables in Word. >> >> It's harder in the New World, I think, where there were more dialects and less education. People in a parish in the hills of Virginia, for example, could have come, and did come, from 'all over', not just Britain, but France, Germany, Holland, etc. Some were native speakers of the evolving local dialect. Others just hopped off the boat. In some cases you can find a man's surname spelled multiple ways in a deed or will (I've seen both). He didn't write the deed or will. The clerk did. Sometimes the only way to determine if there is one man or several is to seek out additional information, such as locale, associates, and his wife. >> >> For example there were two men named William McCarmack/McCarmish etc in Old Bedford County in the 1770s and 80s. One I was an Irish immigrant living on Little Wreck Island and one the son of Micajah McCarmack, whose place of residence I forget. However when about 1786 or so the county was divided up, one was still in Bedford (Micajah's son) and one was in the new Campbell County. That was the Irish immigrant because Little Wreck Island was in it. And when he split for Tennessee, only one appeared in the tax records for the area -- Micajah's son in Bedford. All these guys and several other families are indexed together in the deed book, court records (Micajah's family sued everyone, especially each other), and will book. Their surname spellings were entirely inconsistent and greatly varied. Sometimes the only way to tell which guy it was was by who he was suing or wheeling and dealing in land. Micajah's family endlessly did land deals, often with the Wrights, one of the leading families of the area. The McCamish boys never seemed to have left their plot. Carriers of the M222 variant and late of Tyrone, they'd learned how to survive among the Proddy mackerels: keep the head down out of the line of fire. >> >> However probably the spelling represented how the clerk heard the name and so was phonetic. >> >> The other thing to remember is the vowels change fastest both in time and locale. So it's H*me, alas. You can put any vowel in there and it worked for someone. >> >> I have found names that do not tend to vary in spelling in old records. However that doesn't include my maiden name of Mayson, oops, Mazon, oops, Meeson, oops Mason (through 20 variants in Durham records). Which I found a little unbelievable <grin>. >> >> Reading Scots parish records, I did answer a nagging question: what's the difference between a Fish and a Fisher in Scots records? One parish clerk had kindly written: Fish (Fitch) for me. I believe the Fitch is an Englishism. You see a lot of things like this in the parish records that can clarify surname changes that we'd never think of, today, just because I do not live in an area where Scots is competing with English. And so I learned a Fish was not a Fisher who got circumcized. He was a different animal entirely. >> >> So if you do get 'stuck' somewhere in the past, revisit surname spelling variants. It might help. >> >> Linda Merle -- in cold but sunny Pennsylvania >> >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: "john.hume" <john.hume@ntlworld.com> >> To: scotch-irish@rootsweb.com >> Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 5:05:35 AM >> Subject: Re: [S-I] DNA Made Simple >> >> Many thanks Bill for your information. >> This is one of the sticking points about surnames. As a HUME, I become very >> 'cross' when people insist in putting an 'L' in the middle. Why HULME, as >> far as I am concerned there is absolutely no connection. HULME is part of >> Lancashire, Manchester etc, whereas HUME is Scottish, and of course spelt >> HOME as well. Again in Scotland if you mention HUME or HOME they know >> exactly how to spell it HUME. >> >> As with my cousin, TWEEDDALE is a family name and has never been spelt as >> TWEEDALE, it's double U, double E and double T, any other variation is not >> allowed. Although I do accept the spelling mistake in the 1881 census, it >> may have been down to enumerator's interpretation. This is the only example >> I can find of this error. However, has he has only two daughters, his branch >> of this very small family group will now cease. >> >> Now I know it sounds silly for me to not except any of the variations of my >> name, but when ever I am asked my name, I ALWAYS end it by spelling H.U.M.E. >> out to the person. My father did the same. So is it a family trait that >> unknowingly we have carried on?. When I started 25 years ago, I was able to >> research my direct family, using just the IGI, straight back to 1720, this >> took about three hours in total. I am then amazed at the difficultly that >> 'famous/infamous' people seem to have problems even going back to the mid >> 19th century. Maybe it was all due to the fact that my ancestors could read >> and write, thereby ensuring the surname was spelt correctly, obviously I >> don't know. >> >> Regarding the message about DNA in Ireland. I was in Belfast and Londonderry >> from 1965 -67. I was serving in the Royal Navy and had some splendid 'runs >> ashore' in both places, even got invited by a total stranger to a 21st >> birthday bash in Carrickfergus, frightens the life out of me now just to >> think about what may have happened. If I had known more about my Irish >> connections at that time I may have spent more of my time there more >> fruitfully. Now I'm thinking of going over next year, but obviously now >> having to pay for the privilege. It is a great shame that religion still >> plays a bit part over there. To me, it doesn't matter which religion you >> are, it is how you behave. I have some excellent friends who are Muslims, I >> treat them as they are my own brothers. By knowing them I understand their >> own divides in their religion, if you think Ireland has it's problems, try >> understanding the Muslims. >> >> As to having your DNA taken, I had mine done for one simple reason, I wish >> to know if there are any other members of my own particular branch of the >> HUMES out there. Paperwork becomes scarce before 1700, thereby, spending a >> £100 on such an easy test, is very good value compared to spending money on >> researching something which probably isn't even there. Also, once you >> receive your DNA markers, you are updated everytime a connection is made >> with your own DNA at all 4 points of markers. >> >> Well,I must be off, playing Santa again today. Only managed to upset five >> children yesterday, must do better today. >> >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: "Bill Limebeer" <limebeer@SENTEX.CA> >> To: <scotch-irish@rootsweb.com> >> Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 7:52 PM >> Subject: Re: [S-I] DNA Made Simple >> >> >>> On 12/12/2011 1:27 PM, john.hume wrote: >>> Hi John, >>> you maybe interested to know that there are Tweedales living in the >>> Province of New Brunswick Canada, One of whom I knew some years ago was >>> a Judge at Burton New Brunswick >>> Cheers >>> Bill >>> On.Can. >>>> Thank you Sara, glad I made someone smile today. >>>> >>>> I understand what you are saying about the Irish accent it really is >>>> difficult to understand. But for a real challenge you want to read the >>>> Yorkshire Bible. Now that is an education. But on a serious note, accents >>>> must have played a part in peoples names being entered on census sheets >>>> incorrectly. One of my cousins,has the surname TWEEDDALE, couldn't >>>> understand why he couldn't find his grandfather in the 1881 census. It >>>> was >>>> entered as TWIDALE, understandable of course >>>> John >>>> ----- Original Message ----- >>>> From: "S. B. Mason"<sbmasonaz@cox.net> >>>> To:<scotch-irish@rootsweb.com> >>>> Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 5:54 PM >>>> Subject: Re: [S-I] DNA Made Simple >>>> >>>> >>>>> John, >>>>> >>>>> I had to laugh at your difficulty understanding Americans in films. My >>>>> husband and I long ago resorted to using closed captions on British >>>>> programs on US TV. My worst experience with communicating with people >>>>> speaking a common language (English) was on a trip to Ireland and >>>>> Northern Ireland with my hard-of-hearing brother. Since this was my >>>>> third visit I was fairly proficient in understanding what was being >>>>> said to me but I couldn't honestly say I understood every word but I'd >>>>> usually understand the intent of what was being said. My brother, even >>>>> when he could hear what was said, couldn't decipher the accent. So >>>>> he'd turn to me and say, "WHAT DID THEY SAY?", and expect me to repeat >>>>> it verbatim which, of course, I often couldn't do. Talk about >>>>> embarrassing! >>>>> >>>>> Sara >>>>> >>>>> On Dec 12, 2011, at 9:39 AM, scotch-irish-request@rootsweb.com wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Today's Topics: >>>>>> >>>>>> 1. Re: DNA Made Simple (john.hume) >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >>>>>> >>>>>> Message: 1 >>>>>> Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:39:05 -0000 >>>>>> From: "john.hume"<john.hume@ntlworld.com> >>>>>> Subject: Re: [S-I] DNA Made Simple >>>>>> To:<scotch-irish@rootsweb.com> >>>>>> Message-ID:<8ABED21AA179428687D830F272431AE5@GRUMPYPC> >>>>>> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; >>>>>> reply-type=original >>>>>> >>>>>> Hi Linda, >>>>>> >>>>>> Sorry I didn't send my condolences over your father's death, I must >>>>>> have >>>>>> missed that message. I lost my own father 3 years this Christmas >>>>>> Eve, he was >>>>>> 92 and as he served 12 years in the army and was in the Burmese jungle >>>>>> fighting the Japanese, I suppose we are lucky to have had him that >>>>>> long. >>>>>> As for cats, what can I say, our six month old moggie, jumped off >>>>>> the hedge, >>>>>> cracked her jaw straight in halve as she landed on a brick edge. >>>>>> Result over >>>>>> ?1,000 in vets fees. She was too young and too nice to be put down, >>>>>> now I've >>>>>> taken out pet insurance. >>>>>> Going back to WDYTYA, our programme is 1 hour long, and as on the >>>>>> BBC there >>>>>> are no commercial adverts. The USA ones are shown on the BBC >>>>>> channels and no >>>>>> adverts either but still only 30 minutes long, so I don't think the >>>>>> people >>>>>> over there are getting their money's worth. Do you have the voice of >>>>>> Mark >>>>>> Strong as the narrator. ?. Last week's 'celebrity' was an American >>>>>> comedienne, her family had originated from County Kildare in >>>>>> Ireland, a >>>>>> great shame they only spent about 5 minutes in that country before >>>>>> she and >>>>>> her brother retired to the pub. I certainly agree with the words OMG >>>>>> and >>>>>> WOW, my problem of late is trying to decipher what some Americans are >>>>>> actually saying.Films in particular are becoming very difficult to >>>>>> understand, and there was silly me thinking that we all spoke English. >>>>>> >>>>>> I've had some interesting e-mails from over your way regarding the >>>>>> family >>>>>> of Conway and Hume in and around the 1650's. So it's always nice to >>>>>> keep >>>>>> plodding away, hoping eventually something comes up. >>>>>> 2013 is a big year, 500 years since the Battle of Flodden, quite an >>>>>> event >>>>>> for the HUME family. I hope that you or someone, has this event in >>>>>> mind >>>>>> ready to publish details when they become available >>>>>> >>>>>> Thanks for your time >>>>>> regards >>>>>> John Hume >>>>> >>>>> ------------------------------- >>>>> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to >>>>> SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without >>>>> the >>>>> quotes in the subject and the body of the message >>>> >>>> ------------------------------- >>>> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to >>>> SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the >>>> quotes in the subject and the body of the message >>>> >>> >>> >>> ------------------------------- >>> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to >>> SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the >>> quotes in the subject and the body of the message >> >> >> ------------------------------- >> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >> >> ------------------------------- >> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to SCOTCH-IRISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message