At 06:15 PM 6/4/00 -0400, [email protected] wrote: >There are Sharp families that have been identified from several countries. > >As for spelling, it was only in the 20th century that the spelling of names >became important to anybody (probably because illiteracy was so common Two of my ggrandfathers changed the spellings of their last names in the early 20th century: one changed his from Sharp to Sharpe shortly after he became the first college graduate in his family and the other changed his from Snider to Snyder shortly after he started working for the railroad (possibly someone told him to). I've seen old documents in which people's last names are spelled differently within the document: I don't think this is so much illiteracy as a feeling that spelling one's last name the same way every time wasn't important. I believe that centralized records, primarily the keeping of centralized records in multi-state concerns and in school districts, and the military draft for World War I were enormous influences in the standardization of the spelling of last names. Elizabeth Whitaker [email protected]