Name Variants

 Name variants in genealogy and family history research are a headache.  It means that you have to search for each of the variant spellings of a surname in every resource.  It takes time.  

At WikiTree, the preference, and expectation, is that there is one correct surname, but that just isn't true, and, in practice, what's used is the "last name at birth".  Unhappily, even that is often inaccurate.  Many of my ancestors were illiterate, rural people who neither read, nor wrote.  Reading and writing were not taught to many people for generations.  In addition, official records of births, marriages and deaths didn't begin until about 1881 and, even then, not everyone complied with registration.  Many babies were born at home.  Common law marriage was common.  People died at home and were buried on their own land.  The names written in documents were not written by the person themselves but by others who wrote what they heard and often the name is written differently within the same document.

Spelling had no "rules" until the mid-1800s and, again, even then, spelling rules evolved and "improved".  So, it's no wonder that names can have many variant spellings.

Add to that the mass of immigrants with languages in different scripts, like German, and variants are multiplied.  The history of any language can be very complex and confusing.  My given name, Lorraine, is a very modern spelling and is, apparently, derived from Lothairingen or Lothair.  Now tell me how Lothair became Lorraine.

Many variant spellings are just that, differences of one or two letters because spelling was inexact for generations:  Wormuth, Wormouth.  Individuals who wrote also had preferences that might differ from those of relatives.  My birth surname, O'Dell, alternates within my own family between Odell and O'Dell.  My mother's birth surname, Beismer, is a very modern spelling that has only existed for a few generations and that family line has as many as 52 reported variant spellings, some of them still in use.

So, just a few thoughts about the annoyance of surname variant spellings.  We keep finding new ones for Wormuth.

Where were they from?

 A short family tree branch:

Me

My mom, Georgiana Beismer O'Dell

My maternal grandmother, Margaret Eleanor Wormuth Beismer

Her father, Thomas James Wormuth

His father, Joseph Wormuth

His father, Peter Wormuth

There are several Peter Wormuths, including this Peter's son.  Our Peter lived in Sullivan County, NY.  Family lore is that Peter Wormuth and Harriet Barecolt were the parents of Joseph, Stephen, John and Peter, Jr.  Joseph's death record clearly shows his mother as Harriet Barecolt.  However, there is no documentation, other than that, that she ever existed.  It's most likely that her maiden name is misspelled and sounds like Barecolt; there are many possibilities.  It's also most likely that she was buried in the Wormuth family cemetery where the headstones are missing.

Peter married Grace Deighton in 1849.  They had several children together.  

Peter, sr. is a brick wall; I can't get further back than him.  Peter is the furthest back in my branch of the family.  He was born around 1788.  Various censuses show him born in different places, mostly just New York.  The 1855 Census shows him born in Montgomery County.  There were definitely Wormuths and variant spellings who lived in Montgomery County and pre-dated my branch of the family, but definite, concrete connection between the families has not yet been established.

Les Wormuth and I have been working on just that.

My plan is to get up to Montgomery County this year to see what I can find.  Several historical organizations there have records of various kinds.

Also, my plan is to get to the Wormuth cemetery in Callicoon and try to find out what happened to the headstones - if there were any; it's occurred to me that there may not have been.  If there were headstones, where are they?  If we can find them, they may tell us some things.

I have not been able to find records for Stephen, John and Peter, Jr. that tell us their mother's name.  There is a possibility that Peter, Sr. was married to a Mary who might be one of their mothers.

So far, I don't know exactly where my Peter, Sr. was born.  If he was born in in Montgomery County, which Peter was he and who was his father.  At that point we might be able to continue the research back to where the family came from.

More work to be done.

New Page

  I've added yet another new page; a Lists of Names.  This is necessary because I've found early records of Wormuths, mostly in the military, in the Mohawk Valley region but only lists of names, no details.  In order not to lose these names, I've created the page, with sources so, as I'm able to find out more about each individual, I can create profiles @ WikiTree and add them to the Study.

You can see the link to the page in the menu along the top of the page.  There's a bit of information that indicates what the source is about.  Once a profile is made the name will either disappear or become a link to the WikiTree profile; I haven't decided yet.