The Never-ending Story

I'm glad I heard from Heidelberg University BEFORE I got the document I needed from 1752. Had I not, I might've stopped with the 1752 page, shrugged and said, "Well, that's that."

After all, Heidelberg proved a long-repeated story--that the Alewine ancestor had been a professor there--not to be true. If you recall, a fantastic researcher sorted through many possibilities, going all the way back to 1652, and found no one by any of the several possible names I supplied for the search. Those names included Alewine (and variations of it) and Genewyn, Genewyer, Generoeyer, etc.

The Illinois History and Lincoln Collection possesses a copy of the minutes of the Council of South Carolina in the 1750's. I had given up on finding anything except transcriptions here and there, but I did ask Illinois, and--as with the University of Heidelberg--the staff there was exceptionally, astoundingly helpful. They spent a number of days finding the pages I had requested.

The scribe who recorded these "petitions" for land grants did apparently have difficult-to-read handwriting, as a remark in some internet threads had indicated; but once a person stares at it enough, it's easily decipherable. So perhaps whoever objected to it just didn't stare long enough.

I, however, DID stare when I eagerly found the page Illinois sent. And then I said a rather bad word, out loud. Look for yourself:

December 1752 South Carolina Council minutes

Page 2

In three sections of the document, there are at least three spellings and variations of John George Alewine's surname. And all of them clearly have a "G" at the first. 

This wasn't what I expected to find, but I'm not a person to hide from facts. Someone writing down the "petitions" interpreted whatever John George said as starting with a harsh "G" sound.

We know that J.G. was German, and in the petition he has indicated that he recently arrived from Rotterdam on the ship Rowand (or possibly Snow Rowand; it's actually recorded both ways in other places on this document). Erin Thead has suggested that he must have pronounced his name--and obviously did NOT write it himself, as the clerk was doing all the writing--so who knows what the first part of the surname must've sounded like to a proper English-speaking fellow. The important thing, to me, is what's written in the left-hand column (a sort of summary of the contents in the right-hand section, presumably to help one keep track of the individuals who appeared before the Council):

Thus the last part of the name SOUNDED like "wine." That in itself eliminates the "-roeyer" or "-roeye" or whatever. To the right, it appears that the name could've been "-ewyn" and something else. Maybe the clerk was getting tired: That final version looks a little like "Garaway," the surname of a friend of mine long ago.

So, since the response from Heidelberg indicates that there was NEVER anyone associated with the university whose name began with the "Gene-" variations; and given my own research that shows that there's never even BEEN a name with any of those permutations, here's my theory:

John George, arriving from Rotterdam, spoke little, if any, English. He settled in an area of South Carolina known as "Dutch Fork," so known not for being Dutch but, instead, because many of the inhabitants spoke DEUTCH (German), so that was what English-speaking people called it. He may have pronounced his name in what seemed to the English clerk a guttural speech, but the "John" ("Johan?") and "George" ("Georg?") would have probably been recognizable.

It was the last name the clerk didn't know what to do with. He wrote it down three different ways. Through the years between 1752 and about 1780, his descendants spelled it as "Ellewine" and, finally, in 1800, as "Allewine" and "Alewine." They had to have known how to pronounce their own name, but someone was still trying to figure out how to spell it!

Erin theorizes this: The "-wein" in the left column looks like "definitive proof that he spoke his name rather than spelling or writing it. And it offers a very strong indication of how he pronounced the final syllable and in what accent: '-ein' does not imply French." She adds this: 

It's probably "fitting, appropriate" (as she said) that we won't likely have a definitive answer to this puzzle. So I'm just moving on. But I would've loved to be a fly on THAT wall back in 1752!

Next post: more on the Tolberts and Claughtons.


Ælfwine