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The second way these “duplicates” have been dealt with – especially where surnames are involved - is by changing the

spelling – and sometimes the pronounciation. This practice distinguishes one family group from another. For example, there are Fugates and Fugitts and Fugetts and Fuquas, and Fauquiers, and other variations. This practice is a common one across the cultures (Liftig and Luftig, for example) and certainly originated in the Old World (Hallihan, Hoolihan, Hullihan, for example).

Traditional history calls these varieties “misspelling” and blames them on illiteracy, borderline illiteracy, and to the rudimen-tary phonetic spelling of the barely educated. Whatever the literacy rate in the mountains among a certain family at a certain point What’s Hot? What’s Not?

in time, these variations served practical purposes, and probably were deliberate – if not in their origins, than at least they were deliberately not corrected by subsequent generations, because they distinguished one sub-clan from another, while still associat-ing all of them under the clan umbrella.

Pronounciation of last names also differs, though it may be impossible to know whether spelling changes followed pronoun-The following section, “Our Families,” is divided into two sections: “Dixieland” and “The Golden Door.” I have tried to trace ciation or vice versa. The name Fugate is an appropriate example: in the mountains Fugate is almost never pronounced with a every family back to its American origins, and I must admit, even knowing the predicted numbers did not prepare me for the long “a.” It is usually pronounced: “Fu-git” – which may indicate that the original spelling was closer to Fuquette than Fouquet, length and depth of this project, and so, sometimes I included a lot of material, and a few times I just yielded to exhaustion, and as is almost confirmed by the records of the 1600s, in which Peter’s name is spelled Fuckett – which must have been embarrassing settled for the minimum (this is especially true the further back toward Europe I got).

There were at least 10 families I didn’t include at all – either because their inpute was in dispute, or they were a second or third marriage. The total number of Dixieland families stands at 126 – Golden Door families, 14. Total150.

Family lines are traced as best as possible to the time of their arrivals in America. Lines before America are followed as long as that person lived in America – except in the few cases where an impressively long lineage us available, and when I just couldn’t resist – even knowing that the truth of the line may be more fancy than factual. Notes and discussion are included within the text according to my whim, and are credited whereever possible.

I have tried to alphabetize the Dixieland families as best as I can; the Golden Door families are not particularly, because there are so few of them.

I will continue to follow the style I have used from the beginning of this manuscript by referring to my wife’s ancestors as

“ours,” although sometimes the difference between hers and mine is so obvious that I drop the ruse completely for a while. I adopted the fashion in the first place because this book was originally intended just for my daughters. That was before I imagined a world-wide readership would be interested – the same path most writers take, at least before the book is published. My wife temporarily loaned me her ancestors so that I could “legitimately” refer to them as mine without being charged with “Retrograde Kidnapping Long After Death” – which is currently covered under the Patriot Act.

In most cases only the direct ancestor is included under “children” of the parent ancestor. Individuals may have had – and usually did have– many siblings, sometimes as many as 15 or 20 of them, but my goal here is to record grandmothers and grandfathers; and it can therefore be assumed that we are direct descendants of all of these people.

Each family’s genealogy is treated as a self-contained package; and all of the information included in similar entries for other family lines is dutifully reprinted. This kills trees and risks reader boredom from too much repetition, but it might be useful some day to some one – especially if they want to tear out the appropriate pages. It has also led to the frequent appearance of mysterious dots, random numbers, and other irritating poltergeists of the internet world of cut and paste, and they should have been deleted, but…alas!…how to get rid of them is beyond my kin (no pun intended) or my capability.

The material herein is intended by me to be a collection of raw information for use by me and anyone else who is interested in other writing and research projects, some of which I imagine imagine in the next to the last chapter. The questions I ask at least deserve a discussion, if not a dissertation or two or three, as I think many of these questions are very important.

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