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From: <>
Subject: [SALEM-WITCH-L] Averill, Towne & name changes
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 07:21:20 EDT

Hi all,

I'm fairly new to both the list and having "witches" in the family! It
seems that Sara Averill Wilds was a 7th or so great aunt through my Averill
line (William, William, John, Ebenezer, David, Ira, Freeman, Augusta), as
were the Towne sisters through their brother Edmund. This is all new info to
me, so when I have the details straight I'll post them, but in the mean time,
I'd love to hear from other descendants from these lines!!!

I'd also like to throw in my two sense about the name variations. I too
have many varied spellings in all of my lines, and have found that it was
very common. I doubt that the spelling varied so much because "they could",
but rather because others "couldn't" - meaning the people in charge of
recording a name, such as the census takers, could not always understand the
broken English or heavy accents with which many of our ancestors spoke. In
the cases of Wildes/Wilds, Averill/ Averell, Towne/Town, etc. these seem to
be very obvious phonetic errors.
HOWEVER, in my opinion, if the spelling of Nourse survived for six
generations before evolving to Nurse, I'd say someone changed that one
intentionally, whatever the reason! There are also Averys who are somewhere
in my Averill line, but I have no idea if this change was before or after the
trials, so I can't say if it's possible that this was intentionally done to
hide the connection to the trials or not.
When you look at names other than good old "WASP" names, many of those were
indeed changed deliberately by the family, to hide ethnicity or religion to
avoid discrimination or persecution. I would think that the percentage of
our surnames NOT connected with Salem that were spelled differently at
various stages, is probably no lower than those who WERE connected to the
trials, IMHO!

Thanks,
Joan in Western NY

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