When Names and Languages Collide

1803 obituary of Justus Fox

When doing family history research, I often caution people not to worry about spelling.  Until well into the 20th century, most people were either poorly educated or functionally illiterate.  Spelling was done phonetically, and a person's name could be spelled multiple ways within one document.  In the United States, one of the things that helped codify spelling was passage of the Social Security Act.  Suddenly you had to prove you were a specific person, the same person every time.  Consistent spelling made that a lot easier.

But what if the problem isn't spelling, but pronunciation?  I traced one of my family lines back to a man named Justus Fox in Philadelphia.  He was born in one of the German states and immigrated to the British colonies in North America around 1750.  The family name was formerly Fuchs and was Anglicized to Fox.

When I began to find information about Justus Fox, my mind automatically pronounced his name as "justice."  My first language is American English, and it came naturally.  But then I started thinking about it.  "Justice" (which I have seen spelled as Justus) is seen as a given name in today's society, but it didn't make sense for a German-born man in the mid-18th century.  And then I started to think about German pronunciation.  The letter J does not sound the same as in English.  It has a Y sound; for example, the German word for yes, ja, is pronounced "ya" in English.  When I applied that logic to my ancestor's name, I got "yustus" and was easily able to figure out that Justus is the German equivalent of the name Eustace.  I also found there have been many well known men named Justus.

Another instance of pronunciation affecting research was when I was working on my half-sister's family.  Her mother's ancestry was all Irish all day long, both sides.  My sister's grandmother had done some work, which my sister gave me as a starting point.  Her grandmother didn't have many documents but had written down what information she knew about births, marriages, deaths, and family stories.  One story her grandmother wrote about was a portrait of her mother that had been painted by a Mr. O'Kane.  I thought it was interesting but, beyond wondering whether the portrait was still in the family somewhere, it didn't seem like anything that would help with my research.

I started looking for the family in censuses and found several I was sure were the correct people.  But I found one I wasn't sure about.  The husband was gone, which was plausible.  The mother, listed as a widow, looked right, and one person listed as her child seemed to be correct, but another person that should have been a child was listed last in the household as a boarder.  But all of the names were common Irish ones, and I didn't see enough for me to make a determination.  So I saved that census and looked for other documents.

One day I pulled out the census page again and tried to figure out if there were other clues I could use to decide if it was the right family.  This time I looked at all of the boarders listed in the household.  The name Okane caught my eye, and I remembered the story about the portrait.  When I read the rest of the line, I discovered the individual was a boarder, Japanese — and a painter.  My sister's grandmother probably interpreted the name Okane in the context of her Irish background and thought it was Irish, with an O'.  But now I'm pretty sure that I found the right family.

Do you have any interesting or entertaining pronunciation stories from your research?  Or am I the only geek who thinks this way?

More Additions to Wikipedia Newspaper Archives Page

I just love the fact that so many newspapers are scanned and available online!  Here's a round-up of the latest links I have added to my favorite newspaper resource, the Wikipedia page for online newspaper archives:

• Cuba:  seventeen volumes of the Cuba Review (it's amazing what you can find on the Internet Archive!)
• England:  issues 1–384 of The Strand (more from the Internet Archive)
• New Zealand:  DigitalNZ, a new collection that includes newspapers (but I didn't see a list of what's there)
• Oklahoma:  Gateway to Oklahoma History, with newspapers in Cherokee, Choctaw, English, and German
• USS Cumberland Sound:  six issues of Crew's News, the ship's newsletter
• Accessible Archives:  a pay site with historical black, abolitionist, and women's newspapers, along with some Pennsylvania and South Carolina papers

I think I found an article about someone I'm researching in the Cuba Review.  Now I need to look at those South Carolina newspapers and see if they can solve a brick wall for me . . . .

European Christian Burials in Malabar, India

Earlier this month a new book on Christian burials and memorials in towns of the Malabar coast was published.  Malabar:  Christian Memorials 1737–1990 was written by Dr. John C. Roberts, a social anthropologist, and N. P. Chekkutty, a journalist in Calicut.  It details Portuguese, Dutch, French, and English gravestones in the region. The book includes a transcribed list of Europeans buried in several cemeteries in Kannur, Thalassery, and Mahe during the past two centuries, based on burial registers maintained in various churches.

The book lists burials at St. John's Anglican Church and Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church in Kannur, St. John’s Anglican Church and Holy Rosary Roman Catholic Church at Thalassery, and St. Theresa’s Church and cemetery at Mahe.  Burials at the German Basel Mission cemeteries at Kannur and Thalassery are also included.

There is information about European regiments and native troops stationed at the Cannanore Cantonment and details on deaths in the armed forces.  Most entries have information on the cause of death.

The book was published by the South India Research Associates (SIRA), a network of researchers and scholars registered in New York.  It has two maps and many photographs.  The current publication is a limited deluxe edition with historic illustrations.  It can be ordered through info.sira@yahoo.in; the order will be processed through Thejas Books in Calicut.  A less expensive second printing is scheduled to be available on Flipkart in India and Alibris internationally in the near future.

Dr. Roberts has finished a second book, this one on churches and planter burials in the Nilgiri Hills.  Plans are to release it in early 2014.  He is now working on other areas of Malabar, including Portuguese burials and the Dutch Cemetery at Kochin.

Some of Dr. Roberts' research led him to Thrissur, where the tombstone of a man with a family connection to Christopher Columbus is now located.  The article mentions that all this information being collected could be good for tourism, as people look for where their ancestors are buried.  Gee, you think?

"Who Do You Think You Are?" - Tim McGraw

Tim McGraw's story tonight on Who Do You Think You Are? wasn't as compelling in some ways as that of Vanessa Williams -- free black versus slave family lines make for good drama -- but it was easier to find more direct parallels between McGraw's life and those of his ancestors.  Several of his ancestors pushed themselves and didn't play it safe, and he recognized some of that spirit in himself.  I admit I guessed the surveyor was George Washington as soon as McGraw asked about him, but that's because I remembered that Washington started out as a surveyor (a penchant for remembering weird little pieces of information comes in very handy when doing genealogical research).  The Elvis Presley connection was a surprise, though.  I would never have guessed the name started out as Presslauer.

The show overall followed formula.  It was nice to see McGraw start his search by talking to a relative.  It's possible his Uncle Hank might be the oldest family member still around (they didn't mention he played baseball also).  Then McGraw started gallivanting around the country -- Lee's Summit, Missouri; Rye Cove, Virginia; Richmond, Virginia; Shenandoah Valley, Virginia; Washington, D.C.; New York City.  He spoke with a genealogist, several professors, a curator.  Records were ready and waiting for him at each stop.  The leaps made based on what was presented on screen were astounding, though I'm sure that the background research we didn't get to see backs it all up.  But it presents an unrealistic picture to viewers who don't understand how many hours that research took, and that most people don't go in person to every repository when doing research.

And of course, the ubiquitous Ancestry.com references.  The genealogist who did not say, "Let's look for your ancestor in records," or "Let's look for your ancestor in the census," but who said, "Let's look on Ancestry.com."  One of those particularly annoying commercials -- "You don't have to know what you're looking for, you just need to start looking."  If you don't know what you're looking for, how in the world will you know what it is when you find it?  It reminds me of a current Jack in the Box commercial, where Jack is explaining product placement to his wife.

I think my favorite parts of the episode were when McGraw was reading out loud, trying to puzzle out the centuries-old handwriting.  It certainly looked and sounded real as he stumbled over some of the words.  If it wasn't, please don't burst my bubble.

I'm going to go out on a limb here.  I predict that not one celebrity on this season of WDYTYA is going to do any real research of his own beyond talking to relatives, but that each one will simply visit repositories around the country and the world and find researchers who have everything prepared for him, ready to be handed to him on a figurative silver platter.

Of course, now that I've said that, it'll come back to bite me.  But you know what?  That's okay.  I would rather be proven wrong and have *someone* do some research of his own.