TRANSITIONAL-GENEALOGISTS-FORUM-L Archives

Archiver > TRANSITIONAL-GENEALOGISTS-FORUM > 2012-04 > 1335133802


From: "Kathy Gunter Sullivan, CG" <>
Subject: Re: [TGF] Name Variation, a name change or a priest who can't spell
Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2012 18:30:02 -0400
References: <d359.2c34cf08.3cc44721@aol.com> <4F945E38.5020604@snet.net>
In-Reply-To: <4F945E38.5020604@snet.net>


Nora,

Thank you for sharing your valuable insight into Irish records with the
TGF list. Ann Gilcrest especially must be happy to receive it. I really
enjoyed your interesting message.

Kathy

Aunt Lizzie's Trunk wrote:
> Ann,
>
> In my experience with Irish research, spelling of surnames is quite
> variable, and pronunciation is the key, I believe. The Irish accent
> could not have been uniform across the island in the 19th century, and
> I'm sure it is not today, either. I have come to believe, as well, that
> priests, though they may have been educated, and certainly better
> educated than their parishioners on the whole, might not have been /well
> /educated in the sense we would understand it today.
>
> Similar to your family name, I have been researching a family called
> Langan and found them in a US census as Lanning. I would also expect to
> find them as Lanigan. My own father heard his family name pronounced
> "Gallivan" when he visited his ancestral home. My great-grandfather
> Cornelius Archdeacon was listed as Conorls Schegan (by a German-surnamed
> enumerator) in Cincinnati in 1880, 5 years after his arrival from County
> Cork. (Try finding that with a search engine!)
>
> I have looked at the records at FamilySearch. For the most part the
> handwriting appears very neat and very consistent. It appears to me that
> the priest, Fr. Smith, made a neat copy of his records into this
> register at some point. He then went back and signed each record with a
> thicker pen, or darker ink, in larger handwriting. This "copying over"
> introduces the possibility that he made transcription errors. In fact,
> regarding the entry of Denis' baptism, the previous record is the
> baptism of James, son of Wm. Quinn and Catherine Mackey. I would argue
> that the surname "Quinn" for Hugh was caused by Fr. Smith losing track
> of where he was in the old record while copying into the book. Also note
> the entry for the baptism of Margaret McGuire, two records up from
> James'. One of her godparents was named Anne Kesidy [Cassidy]. I'm sure
> we could find many similar variations.
>
> I have not researched in that region, so I can't suggest any other
> records to look for, but I will say this. The matching of the church
> records to birth order on censuses (note I did not say exact age) would
> be a strong indication that you have the correct family. It is possible
> that finding additional records for sons Dennis and Hugh might help you
> with the ambiguity of the surname spelling and you may find variations
> in reported ages similar to Catherine's.
>
> If you are doing Irish research, however, you need to be comfortable
> with ambiguity and inconsistency. :-)
>
> Nora Galvin
> Bridgeport, Connecticut
>

This thread: