SNGF -- A Name That Runs in Your Family

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: 

It's Saturday Night again - 

Time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1) We all have many names (given, middle, surname, nickname) in our ancestry, whether we know all of them or not.

2)  Do you have "A Name That Runs in Your Family?" Is there a first name — or nickname — that keeps repeating generation after generation in your tree? Share the name, the pattern, and your best guess as to why it stuck.

Thank you to Linda Stufflebean for this idea.

Here's mine:

I have ten instances of the name Dempsey in my grandmother's line. The earliest named Dempsey that I have found is Dempsey Welch, supposedly born in 1725 in Virginia, and husband of Priscilla Perry, who was born in 1731 in North Carolina. I have not yet researched this family personally, but a proposed father of Dempsey was Jacob Welch, but there is no wife. Could she have been a Dempsey?

Dempsey Welch (1725) and Priscilla Perry Welch had seven known children and the fifth was Dempsey Welch (1755) who was born in Georgia.

Dempsey Welch (1755) married Millie Wilkins. They had five known children, and perhaps the first son was Dempsey (1798), who was born in Georgia.

Dempsey Welch (1798) married Elizabeth Rebecca Young in Clarke County, Alabama on 21 Jan 1821.[1] They had perhaps sixteen children, but only seven have known dates of birth and deaths. It is possible these other children died young and were buried in the Welch Cemetery in Copiah County, Mississippi.[2] Their oldest son was Dempsey Perry Welch, born 11 May 1822 in Mississippi.[3]

Dempsey Perry Welch (1822) married Ann Jemima Coor on 16 Nov 1847 in Copiah County, Mississippi.[4] They had eleven children, the eldest named Dempsey Delmore Welch (1848), who was born in Copiah County, Mississippi.

Dempsey Welch (1798) and Elizabeth Rebecca Young also had a daughter, Melissa Welch, who married James Madison Coor on 9 October 1856 in Copiah County, Mississippi.[5] Their oldest son was named Dempsey Perry Coor, who was born 19 Aug 1858. Dempsey Perry Coor (1858) married Mary Victoria Pair on 24 February 1889 in Erath County, Texas.[6] Their fifth child was Dempsey Bryant Coor (1895). Dempsey Perry Coor also had a grandson named Sterling Dempsey Elms (1924).

There were at least two more Dempsey Welches. Dempsey P. Welch (1822) had a grandson named Dempsey Ward Welch (1906) who was the son of William Madison Welch and Sara Ann Ward. He also had a great-grandson named Dempsey Martin Welch (1914) who was the son of Robert E. Welch and Julia Belle Miller and the grandson of Thomas Griffin Welch and Dorcas Mariah Hennington.

This makes a total of ten known men who were named Dempsey in the Welch and Coor family lines. I have not researched each collateral line thoroughly. There may be even more.

Note: this was part of a blog post I wrote in 2021, https://mam-massouthernfamily.blogspot.com/2021/03/week-10-names-same-eight-generations-of.html.


[1] Clarke County, Alabama, Marriages, Vol. A, 1814-1834, p. 111, 1821, Welch-Young; FHL film 1290227.

[2] “Welch Plantation Cemetery,” Copiah County, Mississippi, USGENWEB (https://www.msgw.org/copiah/Resources/Cemeteries/Cemeteries_P_to_Z/Welch/welch.html : accessed 10 March 2021).

[3] Shirley Brittain & Weldon I. Hudson Cawyer, Erath County Texas Cemetery Inscriptions Vol. 1 (Texas: n.p., n.d.), 166, Huckabay Cemetery, Dempsey P. Welch.

[4] Copiah County, Mississippi, Marriage Records, Bk B, p 422, 1847, Welch-Coor, FHL film 876488.

[5] Copiah County, Mississippi, Marriage Records, vol. C, p. 444, JM Coor to Malissa A. Pittman, FHL film 876489.

[6] Erath County, Texas, Marriages, Bk E, p4, D.P. Coor to Miss M.V. Pair, 1889; FHL film 1026025.


Copyright © 2011-2026 by Lisa S. Gorrell, Mam-ma's Southern Family, All rights reserved.

Comments

  1. Janice M. SellersJuly 11, 2026 at 7:43 PM

    Wow, and not a common given name at that. I'm betting that at some point you'll find someone up that line whose surname was Dempsey.

    ReplyDelete

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