What's in a Name, or: Who was Juana Salom Marrying, Anyway?

I am in Washington, D.C. until nearly the end of July doing research in the Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, for my master's thesis on marriage in Second Spanish Period St. Augustine, Florida (1784-1821).  These documents pose a variety of problems, one of which can get downright amusing: the various spellings of names.

I just transcribed one record, the petition of a soldier named Francisco Macharely and Juana Salom.  Well, that's how their names appear on the cover page of the file.

His name is also spelled Macarely, Machareli, and Bacharely.

The awful thing here is, he did not write or sign any of the documents in the file.  One of the things I am attempting to do in my research on St. Augustine in this period is to determine just what people's names were, and what spelling did they themselves prefer.

This is made difficult, if not impossible, by the fact that a number of inhabitants of the town were illiterate.  Or, in this case, by the complete absence of any input by the individual himself.  So, with four choices -- none of which may have been how the name was actually spelled -- there is not much chance I can come to a conclusion in this case.  For all I know, he may have been an Italian, and the proper spelling -- as close as there ever was in those days, at any rate -- may have been Macciarelli.

But I doubt I will ever know.

Even Juana's name appears in two different spellings:  Salom and Soloma.  Testimony in the file is given by her brother, Juan Salom -- who, according to the Spanish marriage law, the Real Pragmática de Casamiento, had to give his consent to the marriage.  In that document, Juan's sister's last name is spelled as Salom.  Salom is the generally accepted spelling among historians who write about St. Augustine during this time.

However, we really cannot know for sure if this was the spelling.  Juan Salom was illiterate, as was his sister Juana.

The task of determining what is in a name in this time and place is made easier by the literate, who signed their own names to documents.  Most of the time it helps, anyway.  But not always.

For instance, there is one individual who was associated with the Minorcan population of St. Augustine, who rose to some prominence.  His name is represented in Spanish documents as Domingo Martinely or Martinoly.  However, he was literate -- at least, he could sign his name.  He was Italian, and he signed his name as Domenico Martinelli.

The problem is when someone was inconsistent in signing his name.  There is another marriage document in which one man's name is spelled three different ways:  Juan Genopoly, or Gianopoly, or Yoannoply.  He signed his name Juan Gianopoly.  On one document.  On another, he signed it as Giovanni Gianopoly. 

So sometimes you just have to choose one!
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Blog Caroling 2012

A blogging tradition in genealogy is Footnote Maven's Blog Caroling.  I am going to enter a Christmas carol I learned in high school when our choir decided to present an international program of carols at our Christmas Eve service.  We sang "Adeste Fideles" in Latin, "Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht" in German, sang "Jeannette Isabella" but not in French (we didn't have the words in French), and we sang this Spanish carol, "Pastores a Belén" (Shepherds to Bethlehem).

Pastores a Belén
Entrad con alegría,
A ver a nuestro bien,
Al hijo de María.
Allí, allí, allí nos espera Jesús.
Allí, allí, allí nos espera Jesús.

Entrad, entrad, pastores entrad,
Entrad, entrad, zagalas también.
Vamos a ver al recien nacido,
Vamos a ver al niño Manuel.
Vamos, vamos, vamos a ver,
Vamos a ver al recien nacido,
Vamos a ver al niño Manuel.

[Shepherds to Bethlehem,
Enter with gladness,
To see our Good News,
The Son of Mary.
There, there, there, Jesus awaits us.
There, there, there, Jesus awaits us.

Enter, enter, shepherds enter,
Enter, enter, ladies also.
We're going to see the newborn baby,
We're going to see the child Emanuel.
We're going, we're going, we're going to see,
We're going to see the newborn baby,
We're going to see the child Emanuel.]
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Remembering 9/11

On that morning, I was home, and I did not have the television on, as I do not care much for daytime television.  Our younger daughter was at that time working for the Bank of America in Jacksonville; our older daughter was a student at the University of North Florida.

Our younger daughter called me and told me to turn on the television.  I saw the information about the first plane having hit the tower, and I thought they were discussing some horrible accident.  But then the camera picked up the second plane heading for and then hitting the second tower, and I said to my daughter, "This is an act of war."

I tried to call my husband, who was in federal civil service working as a computer programmer for the U.S. Navy at Jacksonville Naval Air Station.  I could not get through.  That did not actually surprise me.  I was fairly certain the base had been locked down and that we were at DefCon 3 if not DefCon 4.

I watched the rest of the day, wondering if my husband and I, both having served in the U.S. Coast Guard, were going to be called to active duty.  I wondered also who had done this terrible thing.  Then the towers collapsed in spectacular live coverage, and I saw people running from the advancing cloud of dust and debris.  It was the most incredible thing I'd seen, and I was one of the television audience who on November 24, 1963, watched as Jack Ruby murdered Lee Harvey Oswald on national television.

I felt myself morbidly glued to the tube, trying to determine what was going to happen.  As other news came in -- the third plane hitting the Pentagon and the fourth crashing in a field in Pennsylvania as the heroic cadre of passengers decided that their bunch of terrorists were not going to succeed -- it seemed as if I were participating in some weird technothriller movie.  No.  This was real, the sort of real where, after that day, nothing is the same as it was.

Prompted by Thomas MacEntee at Geneabloggers.
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Vanilla Milk

I'm getting ready to go to live for two years in Pinellas Park while I work on my master's degree at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.  I've been loading my car with boxes of books, so I'm taking a break and having a small dinner of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and vanilla milk.

Vanilla milk is a treat taught to me by my brother, Arden "Ned" Packard II (1942-1996) when I was something like 7 or 8 years old.  The recipe is simple.  In a glass, put one or two teaspoons of sugar and about 1/2 teaspoon vanilla (vary measurements to personal taste).  Add milk to fill the glass.  Stir.  It's yummy, and one of my favorite treats.  I do not indulge it very often, but when I do, I think of my brother.

My brother taught me lots of useful stuff.  He was five years older than I am.  When I was five years old, he taught me how to clean a fish, something our father had taught him.  We lived on Perdido Bay in Pensacola in what seemed to me at the time to be a large house, but then, everything looks big when you're five years old.

Ned died in 1996, of acute myelocytic leukemia.  The last thing he taught me was how to face death with dignity and courage.  That is the most important lesson of all.

And by now, I'm sure he has taught the cherubim and seraphim how to make vanilla milk.
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