Gunsmith names and spelling thereof

[HISTD]

During my research into my gunsmith ancestor (E. Sonnedecker) I encountered several spellings of the name which were obviously the same person.  The name is frequently misspelled for obvious reasons.  Some of the other spellings are obvious, some are not. has anyone compiled a listing of multiple spellings encountered for other gunsmith names? It seems this might be valuable for for research purposes.  If there is interest I would be happy to contirbute the ones I found.

[msmith]

I have found names and words of old are commonly spelled differently..When looking through the census records I have seen the spelling of names change through the years..Though this sometimes could be the fault of the taker.I guess they just spelled them the way they heard them..Many of our ancestors could not read or read well , and spelling  correctly/incorrectly was not a big deal.Someone once said something  like " it is a poor word that can only be "spelt" one way"

[gibster]

From doing family research, I think that different spelling of names was fairly common.  I have a copy of my 7G Grandfathers will and he spelled our last name four different ways in the will.  I have seen this in other wills also.  I've also seen this on land deeds.  Other words in the same will or deed were all spelled the same, but for some reason, last names were spelled in different ways.  Sometime in the 1830's, they seemed to settle on one spelling and it is still the same today. 

[msmith]

Actually I think it was Andrew Jackson that said " It is a d--- poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word" Or Twain

[JV Puleo]

The notion of "correct" or uniform spelling is a 20th century invention - along with the spelling bee. Prior to that there were certainly accepted and traditional spellings, and if you wandered too far from those conventions it was thought eccentric or a mark of poor education, but there was no exact "right" and "wrong." This was especially the case with names, and to some extent still is as immediate relatives will often pronounce their names differently (as is the case in my own family) and many spell them differently also. When you extend this back to the 18th and early 19th centuries, exact spelling becomes meaningless.

The line about more than one way to spell a word has also been attributed to Sam Colt and a couple of other famous bad spellers.

[Sequatchie Rifle]

In working on my family geneology, I've found serveral different spellings of my G-Grandfather's name- in each census is was spelled incorrectly, I think!  It was no until the last couple that it was spelled the way we spell it today.  Ferguson, Fergeson, Furgeson, Furgerson, Fergusson, Furgessen, Farqueson, etc