Re: 1796

[Lunney Family <jglunney@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Richard, I looked at our database at work; 55000 names of people who
lived from mediaeval times to now, mostly in Ireland or moved to Ireland.
There were 2  Jewish Aarons; three Aarons in two related families, three
isolated Aarons. There were 8 pre-victorian Alberts, of whom possibly 3 had
Scottish connections. So not many. I also looked up some sites on
handwriting. 17th century registers sometimes write x as a sort of e shape,
and the final r of the abbreviated form of Alexander flies in the air and
looks distinctly like an n. I also found Alexr written with the x and
abbreviated flying r sort of intertwined together; it was still to my eye
clearly Alexr,however. But since there are so few Aarons around...and since
the register or other source might have been faded or whatever, and perhaps
written by a Scottish-educated minister....and since the nameless careless
amateur genealogist didn't seem to know much about Scottish christian name
distribution.....For good measure, I looked at early forms of Robert; I
found from a site on the Delaware tax lists of the late 1700s that it
would be relatively easy to read Robert as Albert; the initial capital
R in  the handwriting of colonial America comes out rather like a
B--very flat at the front. I'm goingto see if I can get sight of a
couple  of recent books on Sc. handwriting. Do you wantthe addresses of
the sites?   How does a genealogy in Culnama/ Mayoghil/ Caheny or
wherever  that runs Hugh, Robert, Alexander, Thomas, Alexander appeal to
you?  Don't worry, I'm not going to rehabilitate Sergeant Hugh. He can
stay in Clogher where he belongs; this would be HMR Hugh. or perhaps
more likely  HMR's father.

This is this month's hobbyhorse--I need about a week of solid Christmas
shopping to settle me down! Linde