Re: Barneycastle/Bonnycastle/Castle
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In reply to:
Re: Barneycastle/Bonnycastle/Castle
john gould 3/10/03
Hello again,
I'm still online posting the end of my Civil War stuff, thus the quick reply.
I wonder if the other Bonnycastle researcher you refer to went through nearby parish records as well?I would think it could be tricky researching in England because a move of a few miles would mean a new parish to record life events.I sure would love to fly over there and spend days going through everything (though is it all in Latin like court records?).
I know what you mean about basic research as opposed to specific lookups, there are several English research websites, but most don't want to deal with earlier more difficult records.
Yes, the Cassel name change has always puzzled my family and I have a couple theories about it.It seems that the census takers often abbreviated the name from Barneycastle to B. Castle, I think the name was such a mouthful that they wanted to make it simple.But the family used Barneycastle until the Civil War, when all of the sudden some stayed with Barneycastle, some with B. Castle, and two brothers used B. Cassel.No one knows why, but the two brothers married German women and lived in areas which were mostly German, so I'm guessing that they did this to fit in.My great grandfather was John Romulous B. Cassel (signed his last name Cassel), my grandfather was Clarence Cassel, nickname Barney, my father was Russel H. Cassel, no Barney.The pension application for John's brother, Ephraim B. Castle, stated that "most of the family only uses the last two syllables of the name".
It is funny to see what each of the families does with the name, most that change the name use Castle, but some use Barney.One Bertie family uses Barnacascel.I hope they don't mess up your name too much, it's so much easier when there's only a couple spellings to sort through.
Maureen "a bonney lass"