A few years ago I started researching my ancestry. I’ve been told of our ancestry as being something of a mix of Scottish, Welsh, Irish, French, Prussian, and German to name a few. A bit of a European mutt if you will. So the next logical step was to try and research my last name to see where it leads me. It doesn’t take me long to discover that there a half a dozen variations of my last name: Cory, Corry, Correy, Corey. So I tried looking up a few other names from my ancestry: Hambleton, Doud (I’m actually related to Mamie Doud), Habighorst. Some lead to other information, other lead to more variations. Take Hambleton, Hambelton, Hamletonn, Hamilton, Hambletonne and the list goes on. My first thought was that these were all different families, with similar names. Turns out it even more complex than that.
Historically literacy has not been a high priority among the working and poorer classes. So at the birth of a baby, their name is written down phonetically, or spelled phonetically by the parents. The same at marriage, and death. So there are historic accounts of the same person having three different spellings on their surname. One for each juncture in their lives. So tracking down the specific instance of each person, and what happened to them becomes a really tricky proposition. So for now I have to think that I have tons of cousins all over the world with the last name of Cory.