Quote Originally Posted by Big Homestead View Post
Just found out today that it is either McHuish or MacHuish. When my great granfather came over see's he dropped the Mc or Mac for some reason.

Neat.
That is a very common tale. Dropping a prefix or suffix from a name. I hope you understand that Mc and Mac are exactly the same thing, just abbreviations. People commonly signed their own names with these abbreviations all the time.

There are many reasons why families names became altered, and without the family story to go on... you have more of a investigation to perform. Don't worry, it's actually more fun when there are missing pieces of information.

If you say great grandfather, I'm guessing the early part of the 20th century like the Scottish part of my family. They possibly came in through Ellis Island, upon leaving the gang way of the ship and signing in and the officer might have dropped the Mc/Mac right then and there.

Many people would alter their name to avoid detection from the authorities. Possibly he or some relative had a criminal record. This is more common than people like to admit. Which really has so much to do with why so many people migrated to America. It was all about having a fresh start for many people.

Good luck with your searches..

Make sure you lock down abt (approximate birth times), professions, birth cities, *parishes*, marriage, death, military service, college, addresses .....

On the digitized records online: someone has retyped old written records and it is very common to find misspellings and mis typed numbers.
6's are often confused for 8's (vice versa).
1's & 7's....
2 & 3's
5 & 6's
8 & 9's.......

Remember to cross reference everything.. look up the marriage record under the male and females names.... try to match parishes, births, occupations when looking for maiden names....

Save everything you find online for further cross referencing and matching when you actually get to sit in front of the actual records...