Passing On the Names

While looking through the genealogy records that my father put together, I had the idea to fill in the boxes as to the origins of the names of my generation. So here is my half-serious attempt. Comments always welcome :-)

Francis Xavier Kearns: I had heard that St. Francis Xavier was the patron saint of conversions. My recent research (on the internet, naturally,) does not support this, but he was a very active missionary and co-founder of the Jesuit order. Also interestingly, St. Francis Xavier did a lot of work in India, a country that had influenced my father during the war (WW II.) In any case, our mother prayed to St. Francis Xavier for Dad’s conversion and so it was, and so I was named.

John Allen Kearns: John, my mother’s father, was perhaps the most distinguished looking grandparent. Allen, my father’s grandfather on my father’s side, with the wonderful name of Allen Rufus Spooner. One of the links to the early pilgrims, through several generations of Micah’s. Micah: there is a name you don’t see much of now.

Mary Ellen Kearns: Mary, my mother’s mother. Now they had both of her parents covered. Good job. Mary Wrinkle’s middle name was Agnes, another name not heard very much anymore.

Catherine Elizabeth (Betsy) Kearns: Catherine was the wife of my mother Ellen’s younger brother, Lawrence. They were a sparkling family. They aren’t filled out in my Dad’s genealogy record, but I as a child really enjoyed them. Their son Timothy inherited the house in Mill River. Elizabeth? Not sure where that came from. But Betsy was the name my sister used nearly all the time.

Emily Susan Kearns: Emily was my father’s grandmother on his mother’s side. In our memory she is a wonderful old lady, made more wonderful by her brilliant smile and nearly complete deafness. For we children, her voice resonated with creaky traces from the dawn of time. Susan? I don’t know. Our middle names always seemed to ring well with the first names, so maybe that was it.

Jeremiah Henry Kearns: This is the name that started me on this particular writing. My father’s paternal side traces back to what seems like an oddly named Irish immigrant, Maurice Kearns, in Boston around 1860. He was born in Ireland, and in Boston married an Elizabeth, also from Ireland, last name unknown. He named his son Jeremiah Henry Kearns (supposedly born in 1860, but we’ll get to that later.) Jeremiah had a son who he also named Jeremiah Henry (born 1897.)  This Jeremiah, our Grandfather on our father’s father’s side, named my father Donald Allen Kearns. Allen for his wife’s father, Allen Rufus Spooner, but Donald? Where did that come from? But Jere is the third in a line of wonderfully named Jeremiah Henrys.

Finally Dorothy Ann Kearns: Dorothy, my father’s mother. Ann, I don’t know, but again it does have a nice ring. And with Dorothy, all four parents, John, Mary, Jeremiah and Dorothy, had been properly passed on. And ... and ... DAK! The same initials as my father! There you go!

The Maurice Kearns –Jeremiah Henry Kearns puzzle. My Dad’s records have Jeremiah Henry Kearns born in 1860, and married in 1895. But census records of the time indicate that Maurice Kearns, his father, was born around 1852. So perhaps the 1860 birth date is wrong?

Occupations:

Maurice Kearns: Mason

Jeremiah Henry Kearns (1860?) Bricklayer

Jeremiah Henry Kearns (1897) telegrapher in various capacities.

Donald … well, we all know that story

The rest of us are still undecided near as I can tell.

Wrinkle: Genealogists have tended to follow the man’s name. Our American society is patriarchal, But my mother’s family were proud of their Wrinkle name. When it came time for my Wrinkle grandparents to pass down the house in Mill River, Grandmother Mary Wrinkle passed it on to the oldest boy with the same last name.

Frank Kearns

11/2015