Well-named Family

While researching a name for this blog, I came across a couple of families with very cool names I wanted to share, so here they are:

William Williams, a Welsh immigrant to Virginia in the 18th century settled finally in South Carolina and had a son named Frederick who fought in the Revolutionary War.

Frederick had a son named William Williams who married a woman named Martha Wells.

William and Martha were early pioneers in Kentucky and they had Elizabeth, Simpson, Frederick, Ann, Samuel, Richard, William, Mary, Abner, Daniel, and Hampton.

Frederick married Bexey Orton (whose father Johnza Orton had the name I was researching) in Illinois (Bexey had come from Indiana). They had Cordelia, Harriet, Christopher, Desdemonia, Clarinda, Franklin, Frederick, and an unnamed baby.

Samuel married and came with his wife and children to Utah: Luacine, Leonore, Lisadore, Parley, and Eliza. Since Parley is a name commonly given by Mormons in honor of an early Mormon of the time period when Samuel was living, and since he lived in Illinois about the time the Mormons were there and then fled to Utah, I'll assume that he had become a Mormon and came to Utah with the rest of the church members.

I found this family interesting because my father's Welsh ancestor also came to Illinois before moving West. On another line of his family, the Buchanans moved from Virginia to Kentucky and then Illinois, where they joined the Mormon church and moved to Utah about the same time period as Samuel Williams.

I am very curious about the name Lisadore, is it the name of a boy or a girl? Isadore is a boy's name but Lisadore feels like a girl name. But back in those days they often gave boys names that today feel like girl names. I am also curious about Bexey. Is this a form of Bessy or Betsy or a nickname for Rebecca or is it something else altogether? I've seen Desdemona but I don't think I'd seen Desdemonia before. Luacine is another name that interests me. Simpson and Hampton are two names you don't often see as first names, but they follow the trend in the 1800s of using a family surname as a first name. I think I have seen Clarinda before.

very well-named family!

UPDATE  4-9-2020

I came across one Parley Williams in the 1904 volume of Who's Who in America, born in Perry County, Illinois and living in Salt Lake City, Utah when the book was published. His name was Parley Lycurgus Williams born April 7, 1842 son of Samuel Williams and his wife Andromache (maiden name Moore). He was educated in private and public schools and at McKendree College, Illinois 1860-62. His address in Salt Lake was 177 13th East Street and his office at the Deseret News building. He was a lawyer, admitted to the bar in 1868. He was a Unitarian and a Democrat. He married Katherine Sharp in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1876. He was a member of the Utah legislature, 1894-95. He had been district attorney for Wyoming Territory in 1870-71. He was counsel for the Oregon Short Line Railroad from 1872, as well as for the Union Pacific Railroad Company and the Southern Pacific Railroad Company and director of the Malad Valley Railroad Company, St. Anthony Railroad Company, and Yellowstone Railroad Company. He was a member of the Bar Association and a delegate to the large Universal Congress Lawyers and Jurists in St. Louis in 1904. He was a Grand Master of Masons in Utah 1887-88 and belonged to the Alta Club, the University Club, and the Country Club.


My opinion, given that he was born in 1842 is that he may well have been named for Parley P. Pratt (early Mormon figure) so perhaps his parents were Mormon, but I don't know if they stayed Mormon or not. It's apparent that he did not.