Dropped stitches in Tennessee historyAllison, John
History
Dropped stitches in Tennessee history
Allison, John
Jackson, Andrew, 1767-1845 -- Homes and haunts -- Tennessee; Tennessee -- History
Andrew Johnson.
75. James Chamberlain Jones.
76. William Gannaway Brownlow.
77. Edmund Rucker.
78. Nathanael (or Nathaniel) Greene.
79. John Coffee.
80. David Glasgow (or Glascoe) Farragut.
81. Robert Armstrong.
82. William Bowen Campbell.
83. William Walker.
84. John Adair.
85. Montgomery Bell.
86. Charles Roberson.
87. William Carroll.
88. James Overton.
89. George Washington Campbell.
90. David Shelby.
91. Joseph Reddeford Walker.
92. Dorothea Lynde Dix.
93. Robert Hatton.
94. Albigence Waldo Putnam.
95. Alexander McGillivray (or McGilveray).
96. Peter P. Pitchlynn.
97. Timote (or Timothy) Demonbreun.
98. Louis Philippe.
99. John Arnold Murrell.
100. Virgil Adam Stewart.
In the matter of the orthography of the foregoing names, latitude
is allowed wherever it is proper to do so. For example, the famous
“backwoodsman of Kentucky” was in the habit of signing his name “Boon”
or “Boone,” as the fancy struck him; Capt. Leiper was known as “Leiper”
or “Leeper” indifferently, the latter having been the signature to the
Cumberland Compact; the surname of “Bonnie Kate” is always printed as
“Sherrill” by historians (the “Sherril” of Putnam being manifestly a
typographical error), although her father wrote his name “Sherrell”;
that romantic scoundrel, Alexander McGillivray, was almost as versatile
in the matter of autographic variants of his family name as was
Shakespeare--Capt. Allison, in his “Dropped Stitches in Tennessee
History,” speaks of having examined two autograph letters, one of which
is signed “McGillivray” and the other “McGilveray”; the middle name of
the “big foot hunter” is “Sharpe” or “Sharp,” as may be; the Moses Fisk
of history appears in the catalog of Dartmouth College as “Fiske”; and
while the actual name of the “pretty Peggy” of Jackson’s time seems
unquestionably to have been Margaret O’Neill, Parton invariably prints
it “O’Neal.” On the other hand, there are several cases in which it is
not at all difficult to determine the absolutely accurate orthography.
Instances are the Christian name of Meriwether Lewis, a facsimile of
whose autograph may be found in Appleton’s “Cyclopedia of American
Biography,” and who invariably signed his name as it is here given,
although the Tennessee legislature, with that faculty for blundering
which seems an inevitable characteristic of Tennessee legislatures
at all periods, inscribed his tombstone “Merriwether”; the Earl of
Loudoun, for any other spelling of whose name there is no shadow of
authority; John Mitchel, the Irish patriot; Willie (pronounced “Wylie”)
Jones, whose Christian name many persons seem to regard as a diminutive
of “William” (even Phelan makes this error); Demonbreun, which is the
form the name of the pioneer of French Lick assumed when its bearer,
who was “De Mont Breun” in France, came to America--the various curious
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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