hetherington
WILLIAM TAYLOR
hetherington. it is my paternal grandmothers maiden name. rumor has it
that they were twins and were found near a river called heather somewhere
in ireland or in england in the area of nottingham, derby, liecester.
they were named by the people that found them after the river. and were
thought to be illegitamate children of local royalty. they left from
northern ireland and arrived in charleston S.C. i dont know the date. one
of them stayed in the south [my family] and changed the name to hetherington
because he was superstituous and heatherington had 13 letters. while the
other went somewhere to the north east and kept the name the same
if anybody has any info it would be appriciated!
thanks
billy
Todd A. Farmerie
This sounds like one of those "Just So Stories" about how a name came
about. If you look at a good geographical gazeteer of England, I
suspect you will find a town in Notts. named Hetherington. Your family
originated in the area of that town. The rest, about the river called
heather and superstition over the number of letters in the name looks to
be pure invention.
Todd
Paul M. Gifford
On the other hand, stories such as these shouldn't be completely disregarded.
The widow of a first cousin of an ancestor married a Hugh Hetherington in
Washington Co., PA, in 1813. I don't have any further information on him, but
an Irish origin is not unlikely, as southwestern PA had many Scotch-Irish
settlers and the name 'Hugh' would suggest that. However, this person's
family probably arrived in Philadelphia or New Castle, DE, rather than
Charleston.
Paul Gifford
ANNELK
"Todd A. Farmerie" <ta...@po.cwru.edu> writes:
>WILLIAM TAYLOR wrote:
>>
>> hetherington. it is my paternal grandmothers maiden name. rumor has it
>> that they were twins and were found near a river called heather somewhere
>> in ireland or in england in the area of nottingham, derby, liecester.
>> they were named by the people that found them after the river. and were
>> thought to be illegitamate children of local royalty. they left from
>> northern ireland and arrived in charleston S.C. i dont know the date. one
>> of them stayed in the south [my family] and changed the name to hetherington
>> because he was superstituous and heatherington had 13 letters. while the
>This sounds like one of those "Just So Stories" about how a name came
>about. If you look at a good geographical gazeteer of England, I
>suspect you will find a town in Notts. named Hetherington. Your family
>originated in the area of that town. The rest, about the river called
>heather and superstition over the number of letters in the name looks to
>be pure invention.
fanciful-- like a bedtime story made up by someone's Grandma-- but who knows.
The interesting thing to me is that my family has a similar story about the 13
letters. We are descended
from a Heatherington who lost his leg in the battle of Waterloo, and who
subsequently moved to Stratford, Ontario, Canada, or so the story goes.
Furthermore, legend has it that some of his seven or eight children changed
their name to "Hetherington" to a
void the stigma of 13 letters. I am descended from one of these children,
THomas Alexander Heatherington, who apparently was not superstitious. :)
Ann Heatherington
ann...@delphi.com
Todd A. Farmerie
Paul M. Gifford wrote:
>
> In article <32505A...@po.cwru.edu> "Todd A. Farmerie" <ta...@po.cwru.edu> writes:
>
> >WILLIAM TAYLOR wrote:
> >>
>
> >This sounds like one of those "Just So Stories" about how a name came
> >about.
>
> The widow of a first cousin of an ancestor married a Hugh Hetherington in
> Washington Co., PA, in 1813. I don't have any further information on him, but
> an Irish origin is not unlikely, as southwestern PA had many Scotch-Irish
> settlers and the name 'Hugh' would suggest that. However, this person's
> family probably arrived in Philadelphia or New Castle, DE, rather than
> Charleston.
I was refering to the "twins found by the river named heather",
"illegitamate children of local royalty" (in Ireland?) and "changed the
name to hetherington because he was superstituous and heatherington had
13 letters" bits. It could as well have been an Irish town named
Hetherington from which the family derived its name. Likewise they
could have gone from England to Ireland for a couple of generations
before immigrating.
(By the way, I looked at a gazetteer the other day, and did find a
Hetherington in Northumberland, but none in either Notts or Ireland.)
Immigrants of obscure origins seem to collect these tales of being royal
bastards abandoned etc., but if they were truly found by some river as
infants, then who is to know they were royal bastards (but then who is
to know they weren't). Such fables only stand in the way of determining
the true origin of these people. (My grandmother rejected valid
genealogical connections because they didn't fit with the stories she
had created for what the origins of her family must have been. It took
me a decade to discover the correct information, only to find it in her
papers following her death with an explanation that it couldn't be true,
because MY family were important people and this family were nobodies.)
Todd
John Yohalem
> Immigrants of obscure origins seem to collect these tales of being royal
> bastards abandoned etc., but if they were truly found by some river as
> infants, then who is to know they were royal bastards (but then who is
> to know they weren't). Such fables only stand in the way of determining
> the true origin of these people. (My grandmother rejected valid
> genealogical connections because they didn't fit with the stories she
> had created for what the origins of her family must have been. It took
> me a decade to discover the correct information, only to find it in her
> papers following her death with an explanation that it couldn't be true,
> because MY family were important people and this family were nobodies.)
It's the old "royal swadling clothes" story, that goes back at least as far
as Euripides' ION and Moses in the Bible, probably millennia before that.
The best version of it I know is in Beaumarchais' (and, later, Mozart's)
Marriage of Figaro: Figaro, a foundling, has assumed all his life that he
must be of noble birth because of a weird birthmark. When he mentions this
to get out of marrying the decrepit former housemaid Marzellina, she cries,
"Rafaello!" and reveals that he is HER son by his old enemy the Doctor.
There ain't a human being alive who isn't descended from kings and from
varmints. But the kings tend to keep their records a little neater. (And of
course, many a man was both.)
Jean Coeur de Lapin