What's in a Name? Part Two

It’s been a while.

I’ve been deeply involved in another project, and then, SCHOOL, of course—a new schedule with one more class per day added, new requirements for lessons, and so on. I’ll be honest, though: When I could have done posts on the weekend, I was busy with the project instead. I try to leave school at school.


In the meantime, however, I’m happy to have made the acquaintance of a distant cousin in Virginia, Bill Alewine, who has some additional information on John (or Johan) George Alewine that he’s graciously told me to pass on. We talked on the phone as I scribbled notes—and “scribbled” is an understatement—so, Bill, if this is inaccurate, do let me know.

Below is a chart he put together for me, to show how his side of the family meshes with “ours.” But if you look all the way to the top, you’ll see our common ancestor who arrived in the United States. Some of this information appeared in one of Alton Alawine’s last documents before his vision deteriorated to the extent that he couldn’t write anymore, but this new chart clarifies the lineage.

I’d known about the ship, and I had the documents showing the Mary Reissinger connection. Mary was John George’s son Michael’s wife; the John in these documents is their son, who married Katharine (“Caty”), and the documents describe a land sale by Mary, John, and Caty to Allen de Graffenreidt. With Bill’s permission, I’m including his scans because they are better than mine. Please note that the name is spelled “Elowine” by this scribe in 1795!

 

Bill and I had a long conversation about the “Gen” (or “Gene”) in front of the “-wyn” of the name you see in the petition for land. Since within a relatively short period of time the name had metamorphosed into “Alarwyn” and “Elwine”, as shown in several land documents that Bill has extensively studied, is it possible that John George altered his maybe French-sounding (“Genewein”) name into a more German one by dropping the “Gen-” and adopting “Ale-”?


Almost exactly a year ago in this post https://allthingsalawine.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-never-ending-story.html, I showed the “Genewyn” variations within ONE DOCUMENT from 1752. Bill has located additional papers showing that by 1768 the name was being recorded as “Geo Elwine” (as Bill remarks, the first spelling of “Alewine/Alawine” anything like what it is today).

In 1771 an additional document prepared by the same surveyor spelled George’s son’s last name “Allarwine.” In 1772 John Pearson (surveyor in South Carolina) referred to “George Genewayer”, indicating that he had paid taxes, and two lines above that, “Adam Allarwine” (who was George’s son).

To understand how this might have worked, allow me to digress for a moment to a gift I gave my daughter this past Christmas: her very own Ancestry DNA test!

To the surprise of no one in this family, the results show she and we are predominantly of Western European extraction.

I’ve traced my mother’s family back far enough to know they were English and Irish, with an occasional Scottish forebear showing up. But Karen’s test also indicates what other Alawine cousins’ tests show: an 8-12% Alsace-Lorraine (that is, German-French) background as well.

(She drew the red circle around that area showing the French-German origin.)

Credit to Britannica Encyclopedia

As Bill points out, John George and his wife were 100% German. Their son Michael and Mary, his wife, were 100%. And he adds:

I’ve learned to rely on documents more than word-of-mouth, so I won’t make any speculations about the name conundrum. Previously I’d wondered if SOMEHOW a pronunciation had been guttural enough to have caused barely-literate clerks to write down only what they were capable of…was THAT how we got from “Genewyn” to “Alewine”? But knowing language as I do (and Bill agrees with this, being a polyglot himself), I don’t think that’s what happened. It would be very hard to get from the “G” name to the “A” name that way.

Unless (or until) someone finds another document unknown to us now, or possibly invents a time machine (and that went through my mind as I watched Back to the Future again last week), I’m leaving this for the time being.

By the way, Bill also sent me these documents, and I include his remarks : “I got them off the SC Dept of Archives and History on-line archives. They are John Alewine's Revolutionary War pay records, and I believe the last page is his request for pay ‘due to me for duty I have done.’ ‘his mark x John Allawine, say Ellwine’.”

Long ago Thomas Alewine, editor and publisher of the Rankin County News, told me:

…and truer words were never spoken!
However, in Karen’s DNA we also note this:

NORWAY. Where did THAT come from? Another post for another day…

Ælfwine