As mentioned before, any research by myself concerning the Wilson family has been hampered by my lack of confidence dealing with this common name. My New Year's goal was to ponder material that I had acummulated, thanks to savvy family members, and be able to visualize this interesting Wilson story.
GGGrandfather William White Wilson made indications that his parents were Annie White and Joseph M. Wilson in a biography written in 1889 (which I've not seen). John Fletcher Wilson was the younger brother of William. He suggested that his parents were George Wilson and Martha White (Civil War pension papers). Already I have cold feet (literally, I do...really really cold today). How could two brothers report two different sets of parents?
Jack Stevens thinks that perhaps their mother was Martha Ann White and their father was Joseph George M. Wilson. And as William stated that he was of Scotch-Irish and German extraction, this makes sense. Here's what Jack writes about German naming conventions (short version): "At baptism, if two given names were given to the child, the first given name was a spiritual, saint's name. The second given name was the secular or call name...which is the name the person was known by, both within the family and to the rest of the world. This custom was originally adopted in Germanic and other regions in Europe from Roman Catholic tradition and continued by the Protestants in their baptismal naming customs. The immigrants from these areas brought the custom with them to Pennsylvania....For males, the saint's name John or Johan was particularly heavily used by many German families, but also St. George was used by some families for male children...Many researchers, new to German names, who find a baptism of an individual...spend a lot of time looking for that name in legal and census records."
An aside: Looking at some records, it appears that there were three Wilson brothers, William, Fletcher, and Joseph in the Civil War. Joseph was killed in 1864 in Georgia. We'll get back to this subject really soon.
The Photo is of William White Wilson
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