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Assumptions About Given Names
There are many issues surrounding surnames and their variations when doing genealogy, but we can also encounter a lot of assumptions about given names, or first names. To arrange for my dad’s footstone from the VA, I had to provide a few documents to verify his service in the US Army. One of these documents was the DD 214. On this document my dad’s name was listed as Lawrence John Brill. Let me say, this was all kinds of wrong… For most of my dad’s adult life he dealt with the effect of one mistake that was made when he enlisted in the Army. His given name was always Larry.…
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A Wedding and a Divorce
The anniversary of my paternal grandparents’ wedding is approaching. Clarence Lee Brill and Josephine DeBaise were married on April 24th, 1935. Now, this event was not something that was actually celebrated by my grandparents anytime during my lifetime, because they had divorced only a few years later. After my grandmother asked my grandfather to leave, my grandfather moved out of Connecticut, enlisted in the US Navy, and eventually remarried and had another son; my grandmother raised my dad as a single mother, though with great assistance from her mother, her many sisters, and even her in-laws. Since the date was not celebrated, it wasn’t even noted or known by many,…
