A to Z Challenge On the Move: E is for England

England is where Samuel Packard lived in 1638, the year he took his wife and infant daughter on a crowded, dangerous voyage to the New World, to the Plymouth Colony.

Samuel hailed from the village of Stonham Aspal, in Suffolk.  The house where he was born still stands, though it was recently on the market and I fear for its survival.  Such an innate fear comes from living in Florida, where a great deal has been destroyed in the name of development.  The church where Samuel was baptized also is still standing.

Samuel's family adhered to the Church of England, but Samuel himself became a Separatist.  This led him to migrate to the New World.

I have chronicled the Packard migrations from Samuel down to my own father in other posts in this series.  I won't rehash them here.

I do not know how long the Packard family was in Suffolk, but they were there at least from the time of the Domesday Book enumerations.  At that time, there were a lot of men named John all around England.  I don't think there were that many Johanns, but the Packard listed in the Domesday Book was Johann Packard, living in Stonham Aspal.

This raises the possibility that Packard was originally not an English name, but a German one.  England and Germany are closely united in many ways, from the German origins of the English Royal Family to the language.  For all its thievery from languages such as Greek, Latin, Spanish, French and many others, English is at its very root a Germanic language.

Another hint to the possibility of the name Packard being German is a tidbit I found on my way to looking up other things.  Most Packards in the United States descend from Samuel, the original 1638 emigrant.  But not all.  Looking in Immigration and Naturalization records, I came across a fellow named Packard whose birthplace had been Germany.  He entered the U.S. from Mexico in the early 20th century, along with his Mexican wife and their child, who had also been born in Mexico.  Apparently, Herr Packard had been in Mexico for some time. 

So it is interesting to delve not only into the migrations of people, but also the migrations of the names we bear.
 

A is for Arden

This post is part of the A to Z Challenge for genealogy bloggers.  I'm catching up today, because I got a little bit of a late start on this.  This is a Facebook group, so you'll have to log in to Facebook to find out more about it, if you'd like to.

Arden is a name that has been in my extended paternal family for four generations now.  My father was the first.  His parents, Walter Heatherington Packard and Elizabeth Jane (Reynolds) Packard could not decide on a name, as the story goes.  Walter put on the birth certificate "Walter Heatherington Packard, Jr." but grandma Elizabeth ("Betty") put her foot down.  One Walter Heatherington Packard in the family was quite enough, she said.  They could not come to an agreement on a name, so for the interim, they did agree to put Arden on the birth certificate.  They chose that name as a stopgap, because grandfather Walter worked as the supervisor at the Arden Dairy in Los Angeles at the time.

They never did come up with another name, so my father was Arden Packard.  He had no middle name, probably because that, too, had been set aside for a while during the time grandma and grandpa Packard were supposed to be agreeing on a name!

My brother was Arden Packard II, but was called "Ned."  That nickname came from a Naval Academy classmate of my father's who was killed at Pearl Harbor, Edward Worthington, who was called "Ned."  My brother died in 1996.

Various grandchildren and now great-grandchildren in the family have Arden either as a given name or a middle name, preserving the legacy of my father, who died in 1954.  One of these new little Ardens is a girl, and the name fits for both girls and boys.  I have to say that it touches me that my cousins and others in the family have seen fit to preserve that legacy, my father and brother apparently having made quite an impression on them.

Adventures in Indexing: Unusual Names

Today in my indexing adventure, the thing that stood out most was unusual names. 

As I was indexing rural Florida, and I live in rural Florida, I was not terribly surprised at the names, but all the same they are unusual, especially for city folk, more especially for those not living in the rural south.

Unusual women's names outstripped unusual men's names. 

Here are today's unusual women's names:  Charles (yup, that's what it said); Nondas; Milbra (though I wonder if that were a mishearing of "Melba")' Ovella; Avie; Selzma; Trellie; Delamier.

Unusual men's names:  Grose (can you imagine the teasing of a boy had that name today?); Dorthan; Verda.

I checked my stats, and so far the arbitrators are 98% in agreement with me.  My paleography training is showing.

What's in a Name? Or: Clues are where you find them

One problem genealogists run into, of course, is names.  Spellings, variants, two people with the same name -- these occur across cultures and across the decades and centuries.  It is no different in St. Augustine from 1783 to 1821.

One potential problem is one I was unaware might even exist until, in connection with my research on the project, I read Patricia Griffin's Mullet on the Beach: The Minorcans in Florida, 1768-1788 which is the story of the in-migration of several hundred residents of the Balearic island of Minorca, in the Mediterranean just off the coast of the Spanish autonomous region of Cataluña, to work the indigo plantation of Dr. Andrew Turnbull during the British Period (1763-1783).  Griffin mentions one woman who married a fellow named Matias Pons.  Next page she renders the husband's name as Marcial Pons.  I have come across both names in my research, but did not have any idea that there might be a problem.   Were these two different people that the woman was married to (serially, we hope!)?  Or was this one person known by two different names?  I will have to do further research to resolve that one.  Either possibility could be the case; it was not unusual in colonial times, either in the Spanish colony of St. Augustine or in my own ancestral Massachusetts colonies, for a bachelor-man to marry the widow of his deceased brother, nor is it that unusual for a man to be known by two different names.  My own great-great grandfather Matthew Hale Packard was known by his first name in some areas, and by his middle name in others.  In the case of Matias/Marcial Pons, I found a valuable clue in one of my derivative sources.

Another problem is the perennial one of two people, usually men, with the same name.  I have my two fellows named Diego Hernandez and my two others named Bernardo Segui, among others.  These do happen to be father and son, in both cases, but that is not always so.  In the English colonies, Sr. and Jr. often did not carry any indication of family relationship at all, but were just a way to distinguish between an older man and a younger man of the same name in the same town.  The case is (to over use a word) the same in Spanish St. Augustine, where we find "el mayor" (the older) and "el joven" (the younger) used whether or not there was any familial relationship.  There are instances when I do not know whether it was "el mayor" or "el joven" unless there is some clue somewhere in the sources.

Some of the clues are overt, as in the case of tax collector Fernando de la Maza Arredondo and his son of the same name.  The elder had to be away on city business, and his son took over doing the quarterly town accounts, which he was courteous enough to sign "Fernando de la Maze Arredondo, el joven," and sometimes added a phrase indicating that he was temporarily doing the job in his father's absence.  Other clues are not so overt, and I have learned the value of not skipping over the most mundane parts of the documents I am using from the East Florida Papers.  In one testamentary proceeding, that concerning the legal consequences of the passing of one Juan Lauren (or Jean Laurent, in his native French language)., there is the problem of which man of the same name is the one mentioned in the document.  Lauren died intestate, and his effects were sold at public auction.  One of the purchasers at the auction was Bernardo Segui -- but which one is not indicated in the recording of the sale.  It is only in the mundane attestations made by the scribe that he duly notified Señor Segui to come pay for the stuff he bought and haul it away that the answer appears.  These are the boring little notations that the scribe dutifully made, one after the other after the other, to indicate that he crossed all his t's and dotted all his i's, where I end up with my eyes crossed.  The notification in this case is attested to have been sent to Bernardo Segui el joven.  This time, reading all the "doy fes," as I call them because they all end with the phrase "doy fe" (I give faith, or I attest), paid off.

Finally, there is the problem of the multi-cultural nature of the St. Augustine colony and some of the quirks of naming that show up from other languages and cultures.  A case in point is the Irishman John McIntosh, grandfather of the troublemaker John Houston McIntosh of the "Patriot War" of 1812-1813 in Spanish East Florida in which Americans tried to invade Florida and take it over with the intent to hand it over to the United States.  John McIntosh the elder was known as John McIntosh, Mor or John Mor McIntosh, "mor" being a Gaelic naming convention meaning "the great" or "the elder."  One writer rendered the name as John Mohr McIntosh, as if it were a middle name.  It likely was not, but rather this Gaelic naming convention.  I would not have known about that had I not also added to my reading list Charles E. Bennett's Florida's "French" Revolution, about an earlier coup attempt to grab Florida for the U.S.

We all know about the problems that can crop up with names.  We also need to be aware that clues about these name problems may turn up in the darnedest places!
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Women's History Month: Names and naming

Here's today's Women's History instruction:

March 3 — Do you share a first name with one of your female ancestors? Perhaps you were named for your great-grandmother, or your name follows a particular naming pattern. If not, then list the most unique or unusual female first name you’ve come across in your family tree.

First name, no. My mother told me that she was going to name me Barbara -- which is not a name which appears in the family -- but she changed her mind when she read something in a magazine and came across the name Karen, and liked it. It is probably a good thing she did change her mind, because I know several Barbaras, including one of my best friends. I have two great close friends, Amanda and Barbara, and if my mother had not changed her mind, introducing ourselves might have sounded like a routine out of the old Newhart television show: "Hi, I'm Amanda and this is my friend Barbara and this is my other friend Barbara."

There have been several Elizabeths in the family, including the maternal progenitress of my paternal line, Elizabeth who married Samuel Packard in around 1635 or so, her surname being so far unknown. Elizabeth, in fact, seems to be the most common female name in the family on both sides. My great-great grandmothers include Florence Elizabeth McKee and Elizabeth Jane Reynolds.

One of my favorite given names comes from the old Puritan line of my father's, the name being Freelove Packard. I don't think it meant to the Puritans what we think of when we hear that name, especially those of us who came of age in the 1960s!
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Connecting the Dots

I have been working on my grant project, for which I have been gathering information from the East Florida Papers, of which I use the microfilm copy at the Jacksonville Public Library. I have been transcribing the municipal accounts of St. Augustine, Florida, from 1813 and 1814, including taxes paid by shop owners, salaries of some city employees, fines collected, and other such matters. I'm looking for names -- I'm fixing people in place and time and looking for some family relationships. I am finding some preliminary information, which will need to be verified in other records as far as family relationships are concerned. But I have found some instances of three or four people with the same surname. These are generally men, but there were some female shopkeepers in St. Augustine in that period. One of them is listed with the compound surname Pons y Arnau, so I have her maiden name and may be able to find her marriage in the church marriage registers. Unless, of course, that took place somewhere other than in St. Augustine.

I also found a phrase that really has me curious: La viuda de chocolate -- the chocolate widow. Now, what in the world does that mean? Was that one way to refer to skin color? It was written below the name of one of the shopkeepers on a tax list. Sounds to me like a great name for a shop!

But I see the beginning glimmers of family relationships, and this gets me excited. My professor is very excited about my project, and is getting me into contact with some of the names in colonial Florida history.

I'm excited about that!
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Treasure Chest Thursday: Treasured in Memory

When I was a young girl, I went over to my grandma Mary LeSourd Reed's house one day. We were in her bedroom, where she had opened her cedar chest, a plain-looking chest with a tapestry runner on top. In the chest were a number of items, including an old christening gown, bits of tatted lace, and the photograph which appears here.

The baby in the photograph was Wilmer LeSueur Reed, her oldest child, who died in infancy. She told me that he could not keep his food down. When I obtained his death certificate from the city of Chicago, where he died 13 October 1909 at just under one year old, I discovered his cause of death to have been ruled an acute gastritis.

Through my grandma and my mother, I came into possession of the cedar chest and its contents. The christening gown is still in it, as are the pieces of tatted lace. I've added my own items to it. The photograph is on one of my bookcases.

The cedar chest to me was a treasure chest of family history. The christening gown in the chest is the one in the picture, and it also appears in a photograph of Wilmer's younger sister Elizabeth, who was born 10 December 1909, about two months after Wilmer died. She lived into adulthood, and served as a public health nurse and Director of Health Information for the State of Florida in the 1950s and 1960s.

Wilmer lives on a little bit in me, as his middle name was given me as my middle name. It is always sad when a baby dies, but Wilmer always lived in his mother's memory, and he lives still in my middle name and in the photo on my bookshelf.

That's a family treasure.
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What's in a Name?

The other evening -- well, very early the other morning, like about 2 a.m. -- I finally opened up some of my own family history and did a little more work. I explored a great-great-great grandfather I hadn't done much about, named Francis M. Wright. He is on my mother's side, born in Ohio and lived most of his life in Indiana. I traced him back to his father, whose name was Merritt Wright. And thereby hangs a tale of names.

My great-great grandfather, grandson of Francis M. Wright via his daughter Clarissa, was Francis Harvey Reed. He and his wife, Florence Elizabeth McKee, had ten children, many of whom had interesting names drawn from history and literature and, as I found out the other early morning, family history. One of those children was Merritt Wright Reed. By the way, he died in 2004 at the age of 104 or some such! I did not find this out until a few years after that, and heartily kicked myself for not investigating him earlier, for what information could he have given me about the Reed family?

Thus by investigating this Wright line, I found the origin of the name of Merritt Wright Reed and of the first name of Francis Harvey Reed (called "Frank"), whose middle name derived from his own father, Harvey Reed. Some of the names of Frank H. Reed's sons are rather obvious in their origin: Benjamin Franklin Reed (my grandfather), John Ruskin Reed, and William Ewart Gladstone Reed. That tells me a little about Frank H. Reed's education, as well as that of Florence Elizabeth McKee, who had become a school teacher at the age of 17 to help support her mother and brothers when her father, Nelson Reed McKee, had abandoned the family in 1879.

I have not yet investigated Nelson Reed McKee's lineage, though it intrigues me. Where did the Reed as his middle name come from? An offshoot of the same line that brought forth Frank H. Reed? Or was this another line?

Another thing I ponder about names is: What was going on in the midwest in the 19th century? There were a whole lot of men running around the midwest with the same name! I once was contacted by another researcher looking into her line from a Nelson Reed McKee. We compared dates and locations, and had to conclude that we were not talking about the same Nelson Reed McKee. What was really odd was that each of our N. R. McKees had a son named Charles Preston McKee! I should revisit that, though, and be sure the other investigator had the right dates. I have documentation to back mine up.

Likewise, I have found three or four Francis M. Wrights, and at least two of these (including my g-g-g-grandpa) were named Francis Marion Wright. Francis Marion, of course, was the famed "Swamp Fox" of the American Revolution, who ran the British ragged in South Carolina, being a particular bane to Colonel Banastre Tarleton ("Bloody Ban"). Apparently, the midwesterners liked their history (and literature). There were all these Francis Marions, and there were scores of Benjamin Franklins (including my grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Reed, and including a son of Nelson Reed McKee, Benjamin Franklin McKee).

Also on my mother's side lies the origin of my middle name, LeSueur. The spelling varies through generations. My mother was an intra-family adoption, as I have discussed in a previous blog post. Her father -- the above-named Benjamin Franklin Reed -- was killed in a railroad accident in 1917. The Reed family saw to it, according to my Aunt Margaret, my mother's sister, that my mother was adopted by my grandfather's oldest brother, Perry Wilmer Reed (no idea yet where his name came from) and Perry's wife, Mary LeSourd. That is how she spelled the name that was handed down to me as LeSueur. That name also appears as the middle name of Perry and Mary's ill-fated infant son Wilmer LeSueur Reed, who died in infancy of an acute gastritis in 1909. Spelling of that name has been a bugaboo; it is misspelled on my birth certificate.

My mother was named Martha Shideler Reed -- giving her a middle name she hated. I was not terribly fond of mine, either, as a child, but doing genealogy has reconciled me to it. My mother was named for a young reformer in turn-of-the-century Logansport, Indiana -- Martha Shideler. I have a newspaper clipping from 1908, which is rapidly deteriorating, about this young woman. Apparently, my grandparents found her an admirable namesake.

As for my father, he was named for a dairy. That line's names will be the subject of another blog someday.