It was recently my privilege to speak with the sixth grade class at SeDoMoCha about names, and name origins. As many of us are, they were eager to learn the possible origin for each of their own names. I suspect my words of caution to not take our results as gospel went largely unheard, but we had a fun afternoon, anyway, as we searched through the Internet.
Names and history are what sparked my own interest in genealogy many years ago, when I was seven. I had learned that we are related to a famous man who had something to do with the Salem Witch Trials. At my age I kind of thought all important men were doctors. My first grade teacher, Mrs. Roberts, who was my greatest hero at the time, mentioned that she had an ancestor who had been tried as a witch. Keen to forge any bond between us, and fresh from my Saturday morning Alvin and the Chipmunks cartoons, I was thrilled to let her know that I had a “witch doctor” who was the judge! She smiled kindly (as always) and tried to figure out my convoluted thinking (as always).
Many years later, my sisters and I tried to unravel the tangled family links to this famous “witch doctor,” Cotton Mather. Armed only with the “knowledge” that we were direct descendants through our maternal grandmother, Irene Mather, and that he was somehow connected to the Salem Witch Trials of the 1600s we set to work. We had little family info to go on, so we began with the history of the trials. It did not take us long to learn that: A. we might not want to be so quick to brag about being descended from Cotton Mather, and B. No one with the Mather name is a direct descendant of Cotton Mather! Cotton Mather’s grandchildren produced only female heirs, so the “Mather” name was not passed on through Cotton!
Needless to say, we continued the quest for ancestors, and eight years later solved the mystery of the family legend, we are directly descended from a Cotton Mather, just not that one. (They were a form of cousin) our Cotton Mather was our fourth great-grandfather; the other; famous Cotton Mather is my first cousin nine times removed! Now that’s convoluted.
Names are funny things — intensely personal, yet common in so many ways. Unfortunately, such name confusion is actually quite common in genealogy. Especially previous to the last 100 years, when re-using names was more traditional. I know (from experience) that Italian naming traditions, for example, can lead to literal mass confusion. It is tradition to name the first boy after the father’s father, first girl after the father’s mother, and second children after the mother’s side. Imagine, if you will, 30 years later, in a typical large Italian family with six sons, each of whose first son is named Antonio, like his grandfather. Nice. These six new Antonios produce six sons.
However another 30 years later, 36 new grandsons are born, named ANTONIO after their grandfather. And 30 years after that … gotta love families!
Editor’s note: This regular column is sponsored by the Aroostook County Genealogical Society. The group meets the fourth Monday of the month except in July and December at the Cary Medical Center’s Chan Education Center, 163 Van Buren Road, Caribou, at 6:30 p.m. Guests and prospective members are always welcome. FMI contact Edwin “J” Bullard at 492-5501. Columnist Nina Brawn of Dover-Foxcroft, who has been doing genealogy for over 30 years, is a freelance genealogy researcher, speaker and teacher. Reader e-mails are welcome at ninabrawn@gmail.com.
