Hello fellow VANCE listers, It is me again, [email protected] (Tim Vance), I would like some feedback about something that I have Came across several times in doing research! QUESTION: How many ways has the surname VANCE been spelled through the years? Especially in the early years of settlement in America! There were so many different nationalities migrating to America from 1600 to 1800, with so many different accents and ways of pronouncing names, that the spelling of names such as VANCE had to be spelled several different ways. The Scotch-Irish probably spelled it VANCE, the Germans could have heard it, and spelled it VANTZ. The English may have heard VAUSE, The Dutch may have heard VANSE, and the French could have heard VANS. REMEMBER: Many of our ancestors were illerate, they could not read or write, they would tell someone their name and the person would write it the way it sounded to them, which was not necessarily the way we spell it today! IN CONCLUSION: Researching only the spelling VANCE may very well leave some branches missing from our family trees! Tim Vance Orange Co. Va. [email protected] OR [email protected]