Friday – From the #History Files

One of my favorite things about my upcoming novel, LAST IN A LONG LINE OF REBELS, is how Lou begins to research her family history. Like Lou, not everything in my own family history is wonderful. Some of the things I’ve learned are sad, embarrassing, surprising and even downright hilarious. From now until the book release (Sept. 29) , I thought I’d use Fridays to share some interesting things I’ve learned.

My grandmother is one of eleven children born to James Jefferson and Annie Mai Halfacre. Her first four siblings have fairly normal names, but around child five, things start to get a little CRAZY. What happened? It turns out that her father had a brother-in-law named John. One evening, as he was leaving an ale house, someone called from the dark, “Is that you, John?” He answered, “Yes”, and was promptly shot and killed! Apparently the assailant was waiting for a DIFFERENT John and shot the brother-in-law by mistake. Is this the worst possible result of mistaken identity or what? Determined that this would never happen to his own children, my great-grandfather took over the job of giving them names.

Here they are in order:

Hank Brusher

Leo Boles

Cordell Roosevelt

Alice Catherine

Alison Leathers

Q. X.  Quillers

A. G. Neoma

O. Z. Roxy

Tipsy Topsy (Seriously, what??)

Gracie ToeToe

Jessie Juanita

I’m guessing by the time Jessie Juanita was born, my great-grandmother had had enough. The names might be crazy, but they worked! Not one of James Jefferson’s children were ever shot over a mistaken identity!

Do you have any crazy names in your family? I’d love to hear them!