Re: It’s All About the Name

I LOVE this letter, and I LOVE your writing style.  I love to read; you love to write, so we make a good pair!!!  Obviously, your family wants to keep first family names going in each generation.  That’s interesting because we named our children Loni Beth Gamache and Derek John Gamache.

I have 3 brothers.  My oldest brother’s name is Carl Russell Purinton, and he named his son Russell Purinton (I don’t know his middle name).  My grandfather’s name was Carl Russell Purinton.  My second oldest brother’s name is Lewis Goddard Purinton.  My great grandfather on my mother’s side was Lewis Benson Goddard.  My name is Elizabeth Leola Purinton.  My mother’s sister’s name was Leola, and my father’s 1st cousin’s name was Elizabeth.  My youngest brother’s name is Allan Norman Purinton.  My father’s name was Norman Allan Purinton.

Knowing your family’s decision to naming your children, etc., I understand trying to stay with family names and passing them on to the next generation.  As I read your letter to Jeff, I was shaking my head, acknowledging our family did the same thing.

My theory is most families did that, especially after doing family research on Ancestry and ESPECIALLY the Elcik family.   That’s one of the reasons we’ve been having so much difficulty trying to figure out who’s who to say nothing about records being destroyed, which makes it impossible to locate documents before they came to this country.

I’ve said this before; I had the same problem with the Purinton family with so many Humphrey Purintons marrying women named Thankful (there were 3 consecutive generations of them).  Not only that, several of them named their daughters Thankful, further confusing me when they got married and their last names were different.