Author Topic: Cargill/Corrigill  (Read 2750 times)

Offline hdw

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Cargill/Corrigill
« on: Tuesday 19 July 16 14:08 BST (UK) »
I read in a magazine that Cargill Inc. is a multi-million dollar business, the biggest privately-owned firm in the USA, and the founder was the son of a Scottish ship's captain called William Dick Cargill. Cargill was always the commonest surname in the fishing village of Auchmithie, near Arbroath, where one line of my family came from, so I thought I would check out Wm. Dick Cargill on Wikipedia.

When I did, I discovered that he was actually born in Orkney on March 12th 1812, the son of a Thomas Cargill and Margaret -. So I had a look for him on Scotlandspeople, and drew a blank. In situations like this I resort to the "fuzzy matching" option to get variants of the surname, and it turned out that our man was actually born William Dick Corrigill, on the date given above, to Thomas Corrigill and Margaret Dick. Presumably someone in the family decided that Cargill would be easier than Corrigill for Americans to get their tongues round.

Many Americans have difficulty tracing their Old World ancestry precisely because an ancestor - or an official at Ellis Island - changed their original surname, hence the popularity of online genetic genealogy forums with so many American family-history researchers.

Harry

Offline Hibee

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Re: Cargill/Corrigill
« Reply #1 on: Tuesday 19 July 16 15:22 BST (UK) »
Hi

I have Jasper Corrigle Brock, b. 24 April 1806 in Stromness, Orkney.

He has always looked a bit out of place, a) for being Jasper (hardly a Brock name) and b) for having a middle name, when all around had none.

Perhaps named after a Jasper Corrigle?

Hibee
Midlothian: Adam(s), Meikle/Muckle
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Offline hdw

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Re: Cargill/Corrigill
« Reply #2 on: Tuesday 19 July 16 17:00 BST (UK) »
William Dick Corrigill was born in Kirkwall. I haven't been able to find his parents' marriage.

I have only come across the name Jasper in the Scottish Borders, where it wasn't unknown.

When my mother was growing up in Crail there was a fisherman who rejoiced in the given name of Orestes. He was known as "Restie". We had a relative there who my mother always referred to as "Dippie" Spink and I thought that was just a nickname until I researched our Spinks and found that this individual was christened John William Dippie Spink. He was illegitimate, his maternal grandfather was John Spink and another family in the town had a young lodger in 1911 from out of town called William Dippie. I rest my case.

My favourite is a poor child in my home town of Cellardyke in Fife who in 1900 was christened Herbert Kitchener Stewart Swinton. There's a reference on the birth-certificate to the Register of Corrected Entries, which reads: "For Herbert Kitchener Stewart, substitute Horatio Herbert Kitchener Stewart". I shudder to think what the locals called him. He seems to have left the town in later life, maybe to leave that name behind.

Harry


Offline Scottish Janealogy

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Re: Cargill/Corrigill
« Reply #3 on: Thursday 28 July 16 17:47 BST (UK) »
I've seen Cargill substituted for Corrigall in Scotland too, specifically a death in Renfrewshire in 1875. Fortunately it was a middle name in this instance and not a critical surname.