What’s in a name

One of the biggest mistakes made by someone getting started in their family research is failing to recognize alternative spellings of a family name. I should know….I’m one of them! From a very young age, I thought the name “Robison” was special somehow. I don’t know how, I just thought that it was. There were no other families around by that name and since I had no knowledge of the large family in Alabama and Tennessee that I would meet years later I was convinced of the uniqueness! There were certainly “Robinson” families and “Robertson”. So it was probably natural that I felt that if the name wasn’t spelled the way we spelled it, they couldn’t possibly be related to us, and that was that!

I knew I had a grandfather in Alabama named Cecil Lee Robison, or “Papa Lee” to some of the family “back home”. But I never met him, I never talked to him, I never even saw a picture of him. Again, as a kid, I figured it “Papa Lee” in Alabama and the 4 of us in Massachusetts! But when it came time to start digging around (figuratively!) I had nearly resigned myself to the fact that there were hardly enough of us to bother with. I should work on my mother’s side.

My father was born in Evergreen, Alabama but didn’t spend very much time there…long story! So I wrote a letter to the Conecuh County Historical Society inquiring about the remote possibility that there might be a Robison or 2 left in state. The historian (whose name escapes me now) wrote back to advise me that one of their elderly residents had been researching families in that area for years. She gave me Mrs. Sarah R Coker’s address and assured me that she could help. The letter went out in the mail, yes, an old fashioned letter with a stamp and everything! About a week or so later, Mrs. Coker responded! To make a long story short, Mrs. Coker turned out to be my great aunt, the younger sister to my grandfather, “Papa Lee”. It turns out that she had mountains of family research, all the way back to the Revolutionary War, The War of 1812, and the Civil War….or rather…The War of Northern Aggression, as she put it!

The point here being that my family is rife with Robison’s, Robinson’s, Robertson’s, Robeson’s, Roberson’s…all over the southeast United States, Texas, California…you name it! Had I eye opened my eyes, I might have found them, but Aunt Sarah had already done the work! And without any computers.

The lesson is simple. If your name is “Page”, look at “Paige” as well. If your name is “Cowan”, look at “Cowin” and “Cowen” and maybe even “Cohan” and “Cohen”. Translations create an even wider issue: Is it “Lefebvre” or “Smith”; “Laframboise” or “Strawberry”; DuBois” or “Woods”…and the list goes on!!