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women were usually listed by their husbands name---Mrs. John Smith, not Mary Smith. I had an uncle married 3x, try researching him! It took awhile until he was married multiple times---I was marvelling at the lady who bore 34 kids
I laughted out loud at this comment!
BTW I am Pommeranian German. Many people in my extended family use their middle names as their first names.
Seems like it was common for them to go by middle names instead of first names. ALL of my relatives on one side of the family did that. I thought it was just my family, but I guess not!
I love it when there are several generations of "Marys" or "Johns". It's like these people didn't have enough of an imagination to come up with something else. My husbands family does that. Family reunions are a blast. If you call out the name "John" at least 20 people turn and answer you. Craziness!!! I get that they might want to honor their ancestors by giving the new baby g-grandmas name but they can at least give them a different middle name. I did that with both of my kids - the first name is after my husband ancestors and the middle name is after my ancestors.
I've also come across when a child is named after his father flipping the first and middle name. Example Jesse Joseph named his son Joseph Jesse. That's fine but when the father dies, Joseph became Jesse. Drives me nuts!!! My brother's family is like that. He is named after his father who is named after his father, etc. There is 150 years of Matthew Burt's followed by Burt Matthew's.
But like another reply said, that's what makes genealogy interesting.
I have a grandfather name Arthur, a cousin named Arthur and my father is named Arthur and I have a great grandfather named William and a cousin named William and great uncle named William and none of them have any middle names, imagine trying to figure that one out and that is just on my father's side of the family........ My mother's side, are full of Thomas's,George's, and Henry's with no middle names. Talk about confusing, no wonder it's taken me 15 years to try to get things straight....
I have been stumped for YEARS and even hired a professional genealogist, spent lots of money, and she couldn't find this person, and it took her five months. His first name is the same as his last, like "James James." (That's not it.) We can find him with that silly name in land grants in two states and we know who his children were, but we can't find any marriage, death, or birth records on him, and his children left no identifying info about him/their father or mother. He was supposedly murdered, as the story goes, but the records (Georgia) are long gone, etc.
Therefore, I don't know his country of origin, and I'm the last of a line. I was an only child, and I have no family left. I just want to know "where I'm from" on this side of my family. At this point, it still looks the same as it did when I started researching in 1999: I could be either German, Irish, English, Dutch, or German. It's been so frustrating, I can't tell you.
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