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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 1996-10 > 0844581946


From: "Todd A. Farmerie" <>
Subject: Re: hetherington
Date: Sun, 6 Oct 1996 02:05:46 -0400


Paul M. Gifford wrote:
>
> In article <> "Todd A. Farmerie" <>
writes:
>
> >WILLIAM TAYLOR wrote:
> >>
> >> hetherington. it is my paternal grandmothers maiden name. rumor has it . .
.
>
> >This sounds like one of those "Just So Stories" about how a name came
> >about.
>
> On the other hand, stories such as these shouldn't be completely disregarded.
> The widow of a first cousin of an ancestor married a Hugh Hetherington in
> Washington Co., PA, in 1813. I don't have any further information on him,
but
> an Irish origin is not unlikely, as southwestern PA had many Scotch-Irish
> settlers and the name 'Hugh' would suggest that. However, this person's
> family probably arrived in Philadelphia or New Castle, DE, rather than
> Charleston.

I was refering to the "twins found by the river named heather",
"illegitamate children of local royalty" (in Ireland?) and "changed the
name to hetherington because he was superstituous and heatherington had
13 letters" bits. It could as well have been an Irish town named
Hetherington from which the family derived its name. Likewise they
could have gone from England to Ireland for a couple of generations
before immigrating.

(By the way, I looked at a gazetteer the other day, and did find a
Hetherington in Northumberland, but none in either Notts or Ireland.)

Immigrants of obscure origins seem to collect these tales of being royal
bastards abandoned etc., but if they were truly found by some river as
infants, then who is to know they were royal bastards (but then who is
to know they weren't). Such fables only stand in the way of determining
the true origin of these people. (My grandmother rejected valid
genealogical connections because they didn't fit with the stories she
had created for what the origins of her family must have been. It took
me a decade to discover the correct information, only to find it in her
papers following her death with an explanation that it couldn't be true,
because MY family were important people and this family were nobodies.)

Todd

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