Ridpath/Redpath Fall 2000 Newsletter
Newsletter also available at www.ridpath.org
Ridpath/Redpath NewsLetter
Fall 2000
Table of Contents:
Editor's Corner
Meet the Family
Family History Mystery
WebSite News
Request for Articles
Editor's Corner
Welcome to my attempt to put together a Ridpath/Redpath Family
Newsletter. The intent of this newsletter is to communicate
items of generalinterest to relatives, friends, and people
close to our very extended family.That means it covers
current family members,groups, and events and touches on
what we know of our family's history.
Since this newsletter is provided electronically, please feel
free to forward it to other family members or print it out for
family members that do not have access to email and the web.
Feedback is welcome and contributions of articles and
information are even more welcome.Please enjoy being part of
this unique family!
Meet the Family
This section of the newsletter introduces some current family
members scattered across the globe, so we can get to know each
other a little better.
Edward A. Ridpath - North Carolina, USA
Ed, with his wife of almost 20 years Jeanne, and two
children, Ryan and Veronica, live in the unlikely
named town of Fuquay Varina in North Carolina.Ed
works for IBM as a Computer Systems (Unix)
Administrator and is fortunate enough to work from
his home office.Jeanne works for Blue Cross/Blue
Shield of North Carolina as a receptionist, and gets
to fight the Raleigh area traffic twice daily.The
children attend Wake County Magnet public schools,
which keeps them very busy.Their home and backyard
is shared with 4 dogs and 2 cats.
Since getting married in January, 1981 in Florida,
just after Ed joined the US Navy, Jeanne and Ed have
traveled and lived in a number of places in the
United States.The last 15 years have been spent in
the Carolinas, starting in Charleston, South
Carolina in 1985 where Ed was stationed for four
years. Ed (and Jeanne!) left the Navy and Charleston
in 1989 and moved to Aiken, SC where Veronica was
born. Next move was to Spartanburg, SC in 1995 where
Ryan was born. Then in 1999 the move to the Raleigh,
North Carolina area where the family acquired yet
another dog, but no new children.
Ed enjoys his hobbies of computers (work and play!)
and genealogy. He has a great interest in science
and academics pursuits, but has no interest in
sports.Politically, he is registered as an
independent, but generally leans to the left.He
occasionally attends Religious Society of Friends
(Quaker) meeting services and has been active in a
number of 12 step help programs. Like the rest of
his family, he loves animals, and can't say no to
any adorable (or even ugly) critter.
Ed's plans for the future include some post graduate
college work and possibly international travel, once
the children's college education expenses are
covered.
Brian Ridpath - Kent, England
I am divorced and I live on my own. I have a
daughter who lives 60 miles away and who is due to
give birth to my first grandchild in the spring of
2001.
I live in the county of Kent, which is part of the
south east corner of England and is often called the
garden of England. London is 1.5 hours away by
train. My house is only 25/30 minutes away from the
port of Dover and since the construction of the
channel tunnel between England and France, Paris and
Brussels are only 2 hours away by train. Faster than
clearing the airport by plane! Freight trains take
cars, buses and lorries through the tunnel in 45
minutes.
I am a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered
Management Accountants (FCMA) having completed the
examinations etc some 30 years ago. For the last 20+
years I have practiced as an independent Management
Accountant assisting small and medium sized
enterprises with their internal financial reporting,
and straying into other disciplines such as
marketing, exporting, supplies purchasing, and
production control.
Work assignments have taken me to Somalia, Bahrain,
Saudi Arabia, France and other countries on mainland
Europe. I can speak working French.
Because much of my day-to-day work has involved
computer systems including their design, I have
found it a natural move into doing small amounts of
web design work and you can find my business site at
http://www.brill.swinternet.co.uk/http://www.brill.swinternet.co.uk/
Sparetime, when I have any, is partly filled by
acting as a mentor to young unemployed people who
have applied for, and received, a business startup
loan under the auspices of His Royal Highness the
Prince of Wales. I have a small garden to try to
keep tidy and mowed.
Jefferson Ridpath - Toronto, Canada
The Ridpaths I belong to are from Toronto, Canada.
My father (John) was adopted by my Ridpath
grandparents (Elsie and Jack). Jack was the founder
of Ridpath's Furniture--a prominent Toronto
furniture maker.The business is still in operation
under the same name, but was sold by my grandmother
after Jack died in the 1950's .
My father is a Professor at York University in
Toronto. I am an IT Manager and Consultant. I have a
brother, (John Case) in Detroit and also in the IT
business, and a sister (Larkin) in the
restaurant/catering business in Orangeville, Ontario
(about an hour North of Toronto).
In addition to Toronto, "my" Ridpaths are very
closely connected with Algonquin Provincial Park
(one of the largest Parks in Canada). Four
generations have been enjoying a close attachment to
the Northern Ontario wilderness on Canoe Lake in
Algonquin since the early
1900s.(http://www.algonquinpark.on.ca/)
Family History Mystery
In this section we try to bring questions about the family
past that today are not fully answered. In order to make this
more readable, there is no source citations or footnotes, but
there is some basis for all the facts and theories posed here.
What were the origins of the Ridpath/Redpath family names?
Most of us have become used to the fact that we are
all probably closely related.When we traveled and
saw a Ridpath or Redpath in the phone book in a
strange city, we've thought "They must be related,
because it is such an uncommon family name."That
has lead many of us to wonder where the name came
from and how or why there are such variations.
Conventional wisdom has it that the name and family
came from an area in Berwickshire, Scotland where
the small village of Redpath is located today.The
earliest known spellings, starting around 1200 were
some form of Redpath (de Redpath, de Redepath,
etc).The local pronunciation however is a rather
slurred together "rippith".This may explain it's
changing form into Ridpath, Reidpath, and even rarer
forms such as Redpith, Ridpeth, etc.This theory
goes on to explain that as literacy, care in
spelling, and the importance of family/last names
increased, at some point the scattered groups of
family members settled on a common spelling, with
Redpath, Ridpath and Reidpath being the most common
spellings in use today.
Another explanation has completely separate origins
for the two most common variations.The Redpath
name follows the conventional wisdom just discussed,
but the Ridpath variation came about entirely
differently. There was an occupation where people
cleared the road or "pike" between "turnpikes",
which were tollbooths at each end of those community
roads.The folks were "Rid-path"s because they rid
the path of debris and vegetation.Part of this
theory also explains that there were less Ridpath's
so the name is less common than all the family that
grew around the village of Redpath over the course
of hundreds of years.
There also is a single record of a Nancy Redpath in
1798 that has her as a Native American in the
Cherokee tribe in Virginia.Could there actually
have been some Native American Indians who used the
name Red Path?
Now, how did that village in Scotland get the name
Redpath?There are a few theories there as well.
The most repeated one is that there was indeed a
path that was the color red due to the presence of
red clay in the local soil, and the village and
peoples were "of the Red Path" (de Redpath).
Another explanation substitutes reeds or a brushy
swamp, therefore a "Reedy Path". And of course, the
village may have had a number of the people with the
occupation of"Rid-Paths", just to combine a few
theories.
This is a good example of how interesting our family
history can be and why there often is no single,
clear answer to even our simplest questions about
our family's past.
WebSite News
The Ridpath/Redpath Home Page WebSite has been through some
changes, most of them for the better.It has now moved to
it's own domain: www.ridpath.org. It is hosted on a dedicated
system that provides quite a few more services that I am
starting to use.
The pages are now being generated in Microsoft's FrontPage,
which has allowed quite a bit more flexibility, security, and
focus on the content rather than the more labor intensive
method of generating pages one at a time. I even posted a
photo, who knows where it could lead?
A potentially very useful tool that is now available on the
WebSite is the Ridpath/Redpath Mailing List.You can
subscribe to the mailing list, and then an email that is sent
to the list address ([email protected]) is copied out to the
email inboxes of all subscribers of the list. It's a group
conversation that you participate in usingyour regular
email.
Last thing, I have setup a private members-only section.I
don't know yet what kind of things should go there, but they
would be too private for the public at large but not so
private we mind sharing them with our far-flung cousins.It
may be too narrow to be useful, but we may come up with some
good ideas. The most obvious suggestion is for things like a
directory of members, and sensitive genealogical data like
dates, locations, relationships, etc.If you have any ideas
or even concerns, I would love to hear about them.
Request for Articles
This edition of the Ridpath/Redpath Family Newsletter is
rather small and limited, but the next one can be more diverse
and interesting with your help.Items to consider
contributing would be short biographical articles; interesting
or funny family stories; histories of places, buildings, or
institutions associated with the family name; announcements
and notices of family events; even art and poetry could go on
the extended family refrigerator.