New-York tribune., 1867-04-25
FOPTTNEUTNTING.

The Bard of StratfOrd was little wrong when
he asserted that there was nothing in name,
as he admitted afterward, when he declared
good name y to be the souls immediate jewel;
and, perhaps, if he were living now, he would
have something additional to say of It's value
in Wallst We do not remember time when
by virtue of the family name numerous en-
tlmsiastic folks, upon the strength of being
Joneses or Smiths, 1hompsOns with "p or
Thomsons without "p," were not expecting
to come into something comfortable in the shape
of money wickedly detained by the British
Chancery or the Bank of England. We once
knew an excellent lawyer who seriously thought
himself entitled To millions of pounds sterling
and who spent more time and money than he
could we'll spare in the unsuccessful endeavor
TO reduce his fairy gold to possession. 1t
would be Il melancholy business to attempt
computation of all the deferred hopes, the
blasted expectations, the fierce but frultless
struggles and the wasted lives which are
TO be attributed to such dreamy and dreary
delusions. Circumstances make them very COM
mon in this country, i'll which 1t Is almost I'M
possible to prove clean and unbroken de-
scent for more than five or six generations.
Not long ago in Boston 250 people held
meeting, all Of them being named Church, to
take measures for securing the snug little sum
of S55OOO,0OO said to belong to them as the
descendants of Thomas Church of Plymouth,
Mass. The property consists of S20,000,000 in
the Bank of England and the balance in real
estate "upon the River Thames" The Churches
went to work with great regularity. They
formed % society. They adopted constitution
They elected officers. They employed an agent
They raised fund Now begins the hope
soon will follow the weariness Of waiting
when does the reader suppose that the money
will begin To come inf
The main difficulty, as we have intimatcd, IN
such cases rs these, is to prove descent. Fam
lily records, and registers OF birth in New-En-
gland are few, and even these have been Kept
loosely and with many moumtul intermlsslons.
Every lawyer there knows how hard it Is some
times to make out title to real property against
adverse possession by proving Il genealogy. In
the course of years, surnames undergo curious
transformations and there is many Yankee
whe, To- save his soul, or even to make little
money. could not show who his great great
grandfather was. Sumames are at the mercy
of bad spelling and of local pronunciation
he nti1lt ol DcNVir ioi ihS'""N''"
one in New England, was formerly written
"DuelL' and no doubt, originally was "Du
'Val,s and precisely the same name as "Vale,..
a frequent and respectable name in Newly ork.
How is descent. in the absence of records, to
he proved, when names are twisted about III
this wayl So "Chureh' is one Of the most
frequent of surnaInes. having its equivalents III
Kirk" and even AChappel," anGentering into
several compounds, such as Churchill,
"Churchman,r &c al. Analogous names are
"Clerk." "Psrsonr "Priess," Sexton
Bishop Singer" ct al. IN the days OF
ecclesiastical greatness there were thousands
upon thousands of servants who wrote on called
themselves ~ef the Church" and who in time
became Churches. 1t is jumping rather eXten-
sively to conclusion to assume that because
a man is bsw named "Clmrchn he is entitled
To S55,00o,e80. There are scores upon scores OF
families 9f the name Who have not g!obule
of comalon blood. No similarity OF name can
ever b. safely considered as indicating ail'nity.
We might as well suppose all the bheksmiths,
ployers, carriers, wheclers, to he first or second
cousins, or all the Jacksons to he descended
from one ancient original Jack Thomas
"Church of Plymouth, Mass" undoubtedly had
descendants, but how many Churches, of The
thousands of that name, are prepared To prove,
not 10y sucss-work, or slnnllse, or any rule oil