A Case of Puzzling Handwriting

Well, I promised puzzles, and puzzles there will be. 

I just LOVE "Snipping Tool" on my computer. If you don't have it installed, I recommend you get it, if possible. When you've zoomed in on a picture or a web page or a document, it lets you cut out, so to speak, a particular section for emphasis. I use it all the time at school, and it helps me quite a bit in my blog.

So I draw your attention to this "snip":

Land Plat, June 19, 1753

In the "Comments" at the bottom of my previous post, my niece Sandra (who has been researching her own background) pasted some lines from another couple of family genealogies which include the Alewine/Alawine branch. I invite you to go back and look at the whole thread, but I'll "snip" again here to point out something in particular:

Please focus for a little bit on the words "family 'legend'."

Now, you know I'm a HUGE proponent of oral tradition. As I've said in other posts, firsthand information is frequently invaluable in getting a lead on tracing down something.

I've pointed out that Aunt Sadie, married to James Tilden Alawine, was Andrew Jackson Alawine's daughter-in-law. She heard firsthand the history of her Wells ancestors from her aunt and great-aunt, and from her mother-in-law Lucretia she learned things about the Alawines. So when both she AND my own father told more or less the same late-1860's story about Andrew's brother Jim, Alton and I did some research and found enough documentation for that to be considered an actual event.

Same for the story about Andrew's first wife.
https://allthingsalawine.blogspot.com/2017/12/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none.html

In the comments on my last post, again, there are several remarks on a subject some genealogists refer to as "The Name Change." 

The problem with this thing about a supposed "name change" in the Alewine lineage is that nobody was asked about it firsthand. Nobody could've; it happened too long ago, in the mid-1700's.

Charles Alewine's remarks on name change

A little history here: 

Before I began working on genealogy, Tommy Alewine of Brandon and others were already chasing down the family tree connections. In the post where I mentioned him (see the link above), I didn't include the very first letter he wrote me, so I'm doing that now. 

Letter from Thomas Alewine, May 27, 1970

You see that in this letter he says he believes that the earliest ancestor he can find is one Thomas Alewine. A couple of things in the letter are not true: Andrew was the son of William R. Alewine, who was the son of Elijah, not Elisha; Alton and I, working together about 10 years after this letter, confirmed Elijah and Elisha were two different people. But Tommy was working on facts he had available in the 1960's and earlier. More is out there now than he had access to. 

The actual point here is that, even then, the name was considered definitely to be "Alewine"--not Generoeye, Genevesser, or (and hang on to THIS one, because it's important) Genewyn, or Genewyer.

Through the 1800's and earlier, the name had variations, as I've said before. Maybe it was because of census takers, clerks, and other people unfamiliar with the spelling. Who knows? The list here (and I'll stop at 1800) shows just a few of those different versions. Read it and think about all the assorted ways the name was spelled.

Look especially at the first part and, near the bottom in the last paragraph, another section:

The puzzle I'm trying to unravel at this point is why a name like "Generoeyer" would metamorphose into "Ellewine" or "Alewine" in the bottom line (see above). I have a theory, and at this moment I'm waiting on a document from 1752 to prove (or disprove) what I think happened. But notice that the person who extracted information from these wills (Glenda Bundrick) wasn't at all sure about the "Generoeyer" bit. She added question marks  in two places above and "alias." And then, at the bottom, she just went with "Geo Alewine," which was apparently the way the land deed in 1800 was written. 

In other words, in 1800 George and Catherine Ellewine assigned (deeded, sold, probably) 52 acres of land to Thomas Allewine, and that land was part of the SW section of land "granted to his grandfather, Geo Alewine on 20 June 1754" (my italics).

So the grandfather is identified as George Alewine. I believe it may be the same as John George Alewine. In the full land plat drawn in June 1753 (look at my snip at the top of this post), you see the name "John" added in above the word "George," which may indicate an afterthought. Perhaps "George" was mainly how he was known, but the clerk added in "John" to make things clearer.

Land plat, June 1753

Again, who knows? This was over 250 years ago, and my guesses are just guesses now.

But on to the crux of the matter: This plat is NOT the earliest mention of  "John George Alewine/Genevesser, Generoeye, Genesayer, Genewyn." And this is where, I think, the key to unlock this mystery could be found, so long as the right document is still in existence. For our ancestor had to PETITION the governing body of the colony in 1752 before he was awarded the land. The "South Carolina Council" had a clerk writing down the minutes. It is this clerk who--I believe--was the source of the name problem.

I mentioned earlier, in my second post to this blog, that my daughter Erin and I found a thread on a genealogical site in which members posted how hard it was to read the clerk's original handwriting. What Alton had access to--and the only thing I've found available so far--are transcriptions of the original documents. That is, like Ms. Bundrick above, someone tried to decipher what the clerk had written down and found it nearly impossible. 

I'm entering here a page from my old calligraphy "textbook" from which I learned how to write fancy script, so I could do my own Christmas cards, thank-you notes, and so on. 

Pay special attention to the capital "G." It's my belief that a sloppy or hurried clerk might easily make this look like an "A" in hand script. You may be thinking, "How could the 'A' above possibly be confused with the 'G'?" But in older scripts the "A" wouldn't always have been written like this more modern one. However, the "G" WAS, frequently, almost the same as this one. 

Occasionally you'll see something where the letters ARE clearly very different. Here is an example of a 1780 document which has the "A" and "G" both in approximately the style I show above.

18th-century penmanship, Kentucky Co., VA

(Look at the 4th line and the last one.) But if you take individual letters, it's very hard sometimes to figure out what they were. 
We genealogists all know about this problem. I'm highlighting it today to make my case--to youall, but also to myself. Sometimes I have to build my argument in detail to make sure I believe my own theory. 

Here's an example of a "G" from an 1820 census: 

"G" in 1820 MS census

The "G" has a tail which grows thinner and fainter as it goes down.

And test yourself with this:

Here, the left letter is an "S," and the right, a "T." If you're used to this sort of thing, you recognize that the "S" has a top flourish that curves upward, whereas the "T" generally has a flourish downward. Otherwise, they could easily be confused.

The "Kurrent" font is described in Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurrent, and I'm including it here as another reference. If you don't want to go to the page, let me quote the opening statement: "Kurrent is an old form of German-language handwriting based on late medieval cursive writing, also known as Kurrentschrift, Alte Deutsche Schrift ("old German script") and German cursive. Over the history of its use into the first part of the 20th century, many individual letters acquired variant forms."

Comparing the "A" and "G" in Kurrent, you see that the main variation is that "tail" on the "G."

Now what difference does all this make?

Well, first allow me to demonstrate my skills at calligraphy. I gave you all a rough preview last year, but I'm going to try a little harder now. And, by the way, in "trying harder," I am more careful. If I were in a hurry--like a clerk using a quill pen and a bottle of ink, writing things down as fast as I could--I'd be a lot sloppier. But MY liquid-ink fountain pen flows smoothly. Still...

So my final clues are these:

South Carolina Department of Archives and History has an extremely well-indexed list of old documents. In their files online I see, over and over--

--and there's a "-wyer" in the last part of the name. The transcribers thought that part was clear. So let's establish the "w" and "y" and "e."

In other places on the Internet it's "-wyn" or "wyne." There's also usually an "e" in front of  the "w" in all of these variations. An "n" is very similar to an "r" in script. (Try it yourself!) That leaves just the first couple of letters to be iffy.

...And I think I've accounted for the "A."

So I find it hard to believe our name was changed from anything resembling the ones starting with "G." In doing this post, I'm not just trying to convince myself but also to show evidence that a long-believed "legend"--that the Alewines started out as "Genewyns" or something else--most likely can't be true. There are lots and lots of places on the Internet right now where the "legend" is posted as fact.

There are two other things: First, do a Google search for "Generoeye" or "Generoeyer," using a search term like "surname" after the word. I've done it, lots of times, since about 2005. Here's what you get for "Generoeye": 

Searching for ANY of the other possibilities listed through the years turns up the same results over and over: Only discussions of how the name MUST have changed--discussions quoting all those "names"--and I'm afraid they're all based on the original mistake. There are no other records of a surname by any of those spellings. 

Wow.

And, finally, this second point. On the thread Sandra inserted, a man remarked--

--that his information came from Alton. Who got his information from a transcriber. Who got HIS information from sloppy handwriting by a clerk in 1752 who had a feather pen and a bottle of ink he had to dip that quill into as he scratched along, recording what was going on in a meeting. In a way, I feel sorry for him. There was no such thing as shorthand, a typewriter, a word processor, in those days. Not even a cheap ballpoint pen!

So, like a Mississippi lawyer, I lay out my circumstantial evidence-based case. It's the best I can do at the moment, until one of those places I've contacted can show me a scan or photocopy of the original document of the South Carolina Council minutes in December, 1752. If you happen to have one of those in your back pocket, just let me know.


Ælfwine

The Tree and the Revolution

It would be really neat to know where William D. ("Bill") Skinner acquired his carpentry skills.

A while back I posted about the later Skinners ("The Carpenters") and how their talent at building seemed to have been passed on through a couple of generations even to my grandmother, Maggie Evalina Skinner Alawine. If you remember, I posted that there's a family story--never confirmed--that says Bill helped build the original First Baptist Church in Meridian, MS, after the Civil War. Bill and his family WERE living in Lauderdale County around that time, so it's possible. I only wish I could find some proof to verify the story. 

Still, as I mentioned, he was listed in the 1870 census for the county as a "House Carpenter."

1870 Lauderdale County MS

By 1880, living in Kemper County, his occupation was given as "Mechanic in wood shop," which--as I said earlier--I suspect may have indicated a superior skill.

1880 Kemper County MS

But going back further, nobody knows whether his father Howard (his name was probably William Howard Skinner) had carpentry skills or not. 

In this blog I've tried to fill in the major lines of the Alawine family--that is, the ancestors of Samuel Thomas Alawine (and, briefly, his siblings as well) and Maggie Evalina Skinner, his wife. This has taken us down several trails: the Richardses, Wellses, Mercers, Alewines (of course), and Skinners. I realize that some of the documents are hard to see--even with a magnifying glass on the original, they're nearly indecipherable! So here's a chart I drew that may make it easier for you to trace out the lines of people I've been talking about:

By the time you get to Jacob Mercer, Isaac Adderton Skinner, Elijah Alewine, Isaac Wells and Nancy Robbins, you're in the 1780's or so. Elijah was born in the late 1700's; Isaac Skinner and Jacob Mercer served in the Revolutionary War, so they would've been older than Elijah Alewine. 

There are other, somewhat more "iffy" lines I could add, but when I don't have documents to back up guesses, I tend to keep the guesses to myself. 

But back to the question of Howard Skinner: In 1850 he was living in Clarke County, MS. He was listed as a farmer.

1850 Clarke County MS

 
Same thing in 1860: 

1860 Clarke County MS

(Notice how his given age doesn't add up. Typical of census records. Either the person didn't know anymore, or the census-taker just estimated.)

That he was listed as a farmer isn't to say it was all he did. Remember that his grandson Roland "Roe" Skinner built several things in the Rio community, and possibly more in other places. I'd love to hear from somebody near Rio today who could recall hearing about other houses in that general area.

But in 1900 Roe was also listed only as a farmer in Kemper County...same for 1910 and 1920.

1900 Kemper County MS

1910 Kemper County MS

Yet in 1910-11 he was building a church that I had the privilege to document as worthy of being designated a National Register of Historic Places structure.

Zion Baptist Church, built by Roland Skinner 1910-11

So who knows?  

At any rate, Howard Skinner was in "Miscellaneous Township, Lawrence County" in 1820. Looking at a map of Mississippi, you see that the Pearl River more or less bisects Lawrence County. WARNING: I am a map geek and love to see where things happened.

(Both these maps are from Wikipedia, by the way.) If you go further south, you'll find the geological site called Red Bluff, where nature is doing its best to destroy a local road and, in the process, has created what people refer to as Mississippi's Grand Canyon. This isn't a travelogue post, but click on this link to see a video of this remarkable place. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDJFTtDVm6M The process by which the gulch is continuing to develop is natural--no man-made erosion is responsible.

So this is where Howard landed when he left Georgia. He had served in the War of 1812, according to a "stub" record I have.

War of 1812, Howard Skinner

His mother Jane Crittendon Skinner and many family members left Richmond and Columbia Counties, GA, and moved west sometime in the early 1800's. Jane and a number of her children and family members settled near Tuscaloosa, Alabama. As I said, Howard went to Lawrence County, Mississippi,

1820 Lawrence, "Miscellaneous Townships"

but eventually moved on a little east to Clarke County, where he lived until his death. 

Howard's father (look at my chart) was Isaac Adderton Skinner. I'm quoting Carol Alawine Sessums here:

"Isaac Adderton Skinner served in the Georgia Militia in the Revolutionary War...eventually attaining the rank of Captain. His military service took him to be involved in battles in various places including Blackstock Mill, Ramsour Mill, Long Cove, King Mountain, Anson Old Court House on the Pee Dee, Guilford Court House, and Taylor Ferry on the Roanoke River in Virginia, before heading back to Mecklinburg and then home. He served for about 3 years total up through early 1781. For his service to this young country, he was awarded a land grant amounting to more than 1100 acres , mostly in Richmond County, Georgia. He married Jane Catherine Crittendon (born in 1760) and settled down to raise a family."

Again, if you consult the family chart above, you'll see HIS father and mother, his grandparents and even great-grandparents. I am told this lineage was traced because of his Revolutionary War service and is probably on file with the DAR. 

Another fun thing to know about the Skinners is that there appears to be a documented line of twins (usually fraternal) going back into the 1700's. 

Well! That's about as much as I can dig up right now concerning our Skinner lineage.  And there aren't any photos older than the ones I've already posted of Bill and Maggie Skinner. 

A general head's-up: I'm also going to tackle my mother's side of the family in a bit. These people include the Tolberts, Culbertsons, Lukes, and Claughtons, plus the "off " branches from them. Stick around; you may find some things that apply to you in those names as well! 

To start:

Lillian Luke Tolbert

My grandmother on my mother's side. So beautiful. 

She died in 1918 when Mother was just 2 years old.


Ælfwine