On 6/28/2018 1:38 AM, S Viemeister wrote:
> On 6/27/2018 2:12 PM, jmcquown wrote:
>
>> My surname has been misspelled many times over the centuries.Â* I know
>> for a fact I'm related to someone in the midwest who spells his name
>> McKewen.Â* We've established common relatives but the spelling of names
>> has a way of being changed as time goes on.
>>
> Start doing genealogy, and you will see many variations in how names are
> spelled. I went to school with a girl whose first and second cousins had
> 5 different spellings of the family name.
> I've only met one other McQuown - I went to acting school with him, many
> years ago. It seems to be one of the less common variations.
>
One of my great uncle's traced the paternal family history back to 1679
in Scotland (to the Battle of Bothwell Bridge.) He did this decades
before there were personal computers or ancestry sites online. (Heck, he
died before I was born.) From what I understand it took him over 20
years to piece the information together. He went through old church
records, land grants, deeds, birth/marriage/death certificates, old
letters and diaries in archives. Quite a feat!

Jill