Searching for Revis/Reavis/Reeves....etc....Family Connections
@Susan Richards Post moved to get more coverage and hopefully more assistance with her issues.
Searching for Revis/Reavis/Reeves....etc....Family ConnectionsSusan Richards ✭✭March 10 edited March 11 IPv6
I have a great great great grandmother named Elisabeth Revis/Reavis/Reeves. She married my great great great grandfather James (Ewing) Rhodes on 9 January 1845 in Fayette county, Illinois. I have a copy of the marriage and also found her listed - along with her husband James - as the parents on their daughter Elisabeth Rhodes Cole's death certificate in 1933.
I would appreciate any/all information to finding out more on Elisabeth. I saw somewhere that her father may have been James Jerd(a)n Revis/Reives/Reavis.
I wish I had a more definite spelling on her maiden surname.
Thank you for any time and help!
Answers
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https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/family/LCFW-4HB
ID for those looking to help
Found a document that references father James
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Please don't get too caught up with "definite spelling." Standardized spelling is a very modern concept.
In a time when a high percentage of the population could neither read nor write, priests and clerks wrote the name as it sounded to them. There was no one to say "I don't spell it like that. I spell it like this."
I've found records with the same surname spelled multiple ways on a single page, and others with multiple signatures, by the same person, with several different spellings.
You can enter all the variant spellings in the FamilySearch tree profile in the "Alternate Names" section. The hinting and search systems will use all of them to help you find records. My great-grandmother was married twice, her maiden surname had several variant spellings, and she had a nickname.
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