What's in a Name?

How important to you is your family name or surname? The name itself shouldn't be very important but somehow I'm finding out that it is. If you had been a Smith all your life and suddenly discovered that you were really a Jones, how would you feel?

I was born a Pierce but was adopted early on by my mother's second husband and my surname became Alexander. Having lived as an Alexander practically all my life, I'm kind of proud of that name. Being a genealogist, I'm also proud of my ancestors who bore that name.

Family or surnames didn't come into use until about the 15^th century in Europe. Prior to that time, people were just known by a single name. For instance, Vlad the Impaler was known only by Vlad. Of course, we all know about Attila also. As surnames began to be used, the name was often derived from the person's work or from where he lived. The most common example is the town blacksmith, who when he took a family name, usually became Smith.

Back to my story about the Alexanders. Over the past fifteen years I have done a lot of genealogy on our Alexander family. In fact, I had traced the lineage back to colonial times in Cecil County, Maryland. I'm reasonably sure that our family is descended from the Alexanders who migrated from Scotland to Ireland, then across the Atlantic to the colonies. After years of studying the family, I've grown very fond of my ancestors and their exploits.

DNA testing has become very popular in the past few years in genealogy. This testing helps find cousins you weren't aware of, confirm family lines that you've developed and give you some background on your roots. In the past five years, I've had a lot of DNA testing done and it has all been informative and rewarding. One thing I had not done, however, is any yDNA testing on the Alexander side of the family. yDNA testing follows only the male side of your family and should remain in sync with your family surname.

In order to do yDNA testing on the Alexander line, I had to enlist my brother, Milt, who was a direct descendant of Tommy Alexander and his father, Milton Walker (Cap) Alexander. We sent the test off in May, 2015, and just got the results back. Lo and behold, there was not a single match with the Alexander surname! Out of fifteen matches, ten of them were with people named something else. There were a couple of others who didn't match Alexanders either.

This is what the experts call a non paternity event (NPE). It could have been a child born out of wedlock, infidelity in a marriage, a child taking the mother's maiden name, an adoption or any of several other things. The evidence is pretty conclusive that our surname should have been something besides Alexander. The problem is that we don't know how or when this might have occurred.

I must tell you that I am very bummed about this turn of events. It's kind of like finding out that you aren't really who you thought you were. On the other hand, it does provide me fodder for continued genealogy, probably for several years!

I've purposely not revealed the surname which came up.  I want to do some more study before I tell what it is.

The Pierce Family

As I have mentioned earlier, my biological father was Roy Moses Pierce, Jr. He left my mother when I was less than a year old and I never saw him again until 1999, some 53 years later. Roy was called “Junior” by his family. Junior was also the father of my brother, Gary but never saw him. Mom and Dad (Tommy) never kept this a secret from us but we didn't talk about it a lot either.

When Junior was a very young man, he had a severe accident which impaired him for the rest of his life. He was working on the railroad back east somewhere (I believe I was told in Massachusetts) and was critically injured. He was not expected to live but somehow did and his family brought him back to the Cromwell area, where he had been raised. Mom and he got married in late 1945, a couple of years after his accident. For the rest of his life, his family used the accident as the reason for his challenges.

Junior had several brothers and a sister, most of whom lived in the Bakersfield area where their parents had moved in the 1940's. As a child and young man, I never had any contact with any of them except for once when I was about 18. I was working at Ted Norwood's service station in Mannford when, one day, Ted came back to where I was working and told me that Pete and Bessie Barton were out on the drive and wanted to talk to me. Pete and Bessie were long time Mannford residents but I hardly knew them and found it strange that they would want to talk with me. When I went out to their car, Pete and Bessie were in the front seat and an unknown couple were in the back. We had an awkward two minute “how do you do?” conversation and I went back to work. That evening I was relating the meeting to my mother and she told me that the woman in the back seat was my aunt, Ninah Melton, Junior's sister. She had known that the Bartons knew Ninah and her husband somehow.

Many years later (35, in fact), I was talking to Mom one day and she told me that Ninah had contacted her and asked if Gary and I would have any interest in seeing any of the Pierce family. Since I had just retired and was somewhat curious anyway, I called Ninah and talked to her. Eventually, Louise and I decided to make a trip to California to see the Pierce's. I talked about this with Gary and he had absolutely no desire to meet any of them. In fact, I think he was somewhat upset with me that I would consider seeing them. I was concerned about hurting Dad's feelings; he was my true father even though he had adopted Gary and me.

Eventually, Louise and I did go to Bakersfield and meet the Pierces. Ninah, being the only girl in the family, was kind of the “hub” of the group. Junior had had a stroke and lived with another brother, Lloyd, in Bakersfield. Lloyd was a widower and enjoyed Junior's company, I think. The whole time we spent there was kind of surreal; they didn't quite know how to treat me and I was probably a bit of an ass to them, wanting to remain aloof.

While I was there, I did learn about one of my uncles, Larry Stanley Pierce. He had served in the Army in Viet Nam and had been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously. He had thrown himself on a grenade to save his platoon. He was one of the first Viet Nam era recipients of the Medal and his family was flown to Washington, DC, to have the Medal presented by President Johnson. Larry was married and left two small children behind. I have never met his wife or children. Today, both a street and a post office in Taft, California are named after him.

I was surprised to learn that Junior had never remarried and had no other children. I had really expected to find that I had some brothers and sisters. Because of the stroke he had suffered, he had a speech impairment and was extremely self conscious about it. After a couple of days, Louise and I returned back home. About a year later, Rachel, my daughter, indicated that she would like to meet the Pierce family as well so she and I flew out to Bakersfield. Again, it was a somewhat awkward meeting. Dan, my son, never had any interest in meeting them, not because he harbored any ill will; he just was not interested. I wonder today what Junior thought about us showing up. I don't know whether he was truly glad to see us or whether the whole deal was Ninah's idea and he wished we had just not shown up.

Ninah died in 2002 and Junior in 2003. We had not stayed in contact and I didn't know until sometime later that they had both passed.

In about 2000, I became interested in genealogy and did a lot of work on the Alexander and Mooneyham families. My mother's mother was a Mooneyham. I didn't spend a lot of time on the Pierce's (since I didn't know much about them) or on the Nash's, my mother's father's family.

In about 2010, however, I began to do some study on the Pierce family and quickly found a cousin, Sharon Pierce, who was also into genealogy. Sharon lives in Fayetteville, North Carolina, with her son Christian, and her father, Coy. I had talked to Coy on the phone back in 1999 but had not gotten any feel for what kind of person he was.

In October, 2013, Louise and I were going to meet Dan and Dorinda in Atlanta where they lived and spend a long weekend in the mountains of North Carolina. I decided that, since we were already in the state, we should go on over to Fayetteville and meet Sharon and Coy. I called her and made the arrangements. When we met them, we were immediately comfortable and at ease with them. I supposed I had gotten over my desire to distance myself from the Pierce's.

Coy had been a career Army guy and the reason they lived in Fayetteville was its proximity to Fort Benning where he had been stationed for a long time. He moved in with Sharon in about 2012 to help her with her house and provide some company. Sharon is a sales person in the food service industry and has done that kind of work for many years. Louise and I enjoyed ourselves and were glad that we had made the decision to go visit Coy and Sharon.

If I had a “do over”, what would I change? Probably nothing except that I would have been more responsive on those two trips to California. Roy Pierce, Jr. could never replace Tommy Alexander as my father but I still would like to have known a little bit more about him.

Genealogy

Louise and I have been interested in genealogy for several years now and have spent our share of time looking through cemeteries for specific tombstones.  Its the kind of hobby where you can kind of run hot or cold; we just finished a stretch of three or four years where we didn't do anything at all.

Probably my best success was with my father's family.  Dad knew his own father but no one beyond that.  We were able to track his family back several generations and found out a lot of interesting things.  This was all done while he was still alive so he got to learn his family a bit better.

My mother's family is interesting in that HER mother's side has been well documented back to before the American Revolution.  In fact, there have been widely circulated books about this family.  On the other hand, her father's side (my maternal grandfather) is a complete dead end.  We know my grandfather's parents' names but nothing else about them.  Its kind of frustrating but perhaps some day we will find the key.  Ironically, Granddad was a member of the LDS church which is completely dedicated to genealogy.

As you may have guessed, we have started doing a bit more genealogy lately.  It is absolutely amazing how much "stuff" has been added on the Internet since we were involved last.  We just purchased a subscription to Ancestry.com and have already learned a lot just by going through their files.  Another interesting website is Findagrave.com, where volunteers have listed millions of tombstones from around the World.

It is a very fascinating hobby and if you have some spare time and interest in your family's past, you should look into it.  It has been very rewarding for us.