Last name: Wickliffe

Google the name Wickliffe & a thousand different things will pop up.

http://www.familycrestdb.com/irish/wickliffe-surname.html

I found everything from cities & counties named Wickliffe to car rental places & pharmaceutical companies.

The surname has no formal meaning, but it is used as both a first & last name.

I'd always believed that it had some German origin, but the surname actually originated in Northern England.  

https://www.historicalnames.com/wickliffe-coat-of-arms.aspx

According to the surname database, the name may have come from the term "white cliff".

The spelling varies, but I've seen it spelled several ways: Wycliffe, Wickliff, Wycliff or Wicliffe.   

So how did we end up with the last name Wickliffe?

This is a mystery I'm still trying to solve.

I've blogged about it a few times in the past:

• Who was Joe/Joseph Bodine?
• Pond Creek
• Robert Wickliffe's Will

Whether my ancestors were given as wedding gifts or in a will, I'm still unsure, but regardless, we were eventually given the surname from our original slave owners.

 Will the family name continue?

With only a few Wickliffe males left, is our family name being preserved?  

I've never been to a family reunion.  My mother is the only person besides a distant cousin who has ever told me about my family.  

What will happen when they are unable tell their stories?

Surname Sundays: The Render Family

I'm not sure if I'm on the right track when I search for this family or not.  I've only found 1 person in my family who even married a Render.

I think that this is a classic case of what genealogist call searching for someone else's family.  I found one link in our trees & ran with it.  

However, I do think that there is a link.

This is the last census (1910) that William appears in.  

I see 3 of William & Daisy's children are born, they did have another daughter Gracie before his death in 1914.

(I also see multiple family members in the same area for the first time on a census.)

The census 10 years before is a little tougher to read, but I was able to find my three times great grandparents living next door to the Render family-Nelson, Martha & their 9 children. 

I'm a little curious about the fact that the other families living near them are a Carbin family & another Wickliffe family. 
(There is a Carbin family living on the other side of my three times great grandparents & a Wickliffe family living next door to the Render family.)  

So who are the other Renders in my tree?  

This is where I start to get a little confused. I've found several Render families in the area, but I'm not sure if the families I find after this period or before are the same Renders in these 2 census records.  

I guess this could have been a Monday mystery too.  

Can anyone help?????

Surname Sundays: Collins

There are a lot of branches to my tree, but the beginning of the other side of my grandparents starts with the Collins family.

Because of this linage, we have my two times great grandmother Probie, whom I think was named after her father's sister. 

(same name different spelling.) 

I've posted about this before.Check it out here.

Now this may not be the finished line, but I've started to make a little headway with the Collins line recently.  As you can see, I still don't know who Lily Collins was married to/who William Collins' father was.

Surname Sundays: The Harrisons

How do you have a blog about the Wickliffe family without talking about the other families that were involved?

This is the question I ask myself every week when I try to think of post for this blog, I find that a lot of went on, specifically with the Wickliffe family, involved other families that I may have never blogged about.  

Which is why I want to start a new tag this week: Surname Sundays!

Surname Sundays features another family line that intertwined with mine.  

This week, I want to start from the beginning:        

The Harrison family.  

 This is a copy of the 1930 census from Muhlenberg county, Kentucky where my grandparents grew up.

Just 5 houses separated them, but so did 13 years!  

I know it is a little difficult to see, but the Harrisons, like the Wickliffes, owned the farm they lived in (worth about $800-roughly $11, 000 today).  

My great grandparents had two children at the time of this census.  One you are able to see, my grandmother, who was only 2 & one who you can't see because he appears on the next page of the census,my great uncle James Henry Harrison, who was only 3 months old.  

10  years later, in the 1940 census, 2 new families separated my grandparents but they still lived in the same area and only 1 other black family lived in the area.

 Now the census record states they are only 10 years apart.

I wonder why their farmers depreciated in value so much over the years?????

The work I've been able to accomplish on this side of my tree is minimal at best.

Can anyone help?