I see a lot of profiles for people born before the American Revolutionary War with the given name George Washington

Question

How is it possible that so many people named their children "George Washington" before the American Revolution even took place?  After the war, naming your child after the first American president makes perfect sense if you or your family fought for independence.  But to name your son after him before he was even a public figure?  Something's wrong here.

What should be done about people with the given name "Washington" who were born before the Revolutionary War?

Comments

The real reason is that a lot of people think that because databases, like Wikitree, have a middle name field, their genealogy isn't complete without a middle name. So when they research people born in the 1700s, when hardly anybody had middle names, they have to come up with something. When they see somebody named "George", they think, "aha, he must have been named for George Washington," so that's what they fill in.

---

This happens a lot with other presidents too, especially the early ones. I run into anachronistic James Monroe * and James Madison * a lot for some reason.

---

Also, the thing R.J. points out happens a lot. You have someone born in, say, 1790, who really was named George Washington Puddentain. His father was George Puddentain (b. 1750) and grandfather was also George Puddentain (b. 1720), so obviously, both father and grandfather's full names "must have been" George Washington Puddentain, and the existing records simply "must have" left off the middle name. It's important to remember that it's highly unlikely that anyone born before about 1750 has a middle name in the modern sense, and it doesn't really start to get common until around the time of the Revolution in America.

---

This profile has a lot of other problems too. This Ephraim "Washington" was supposedly 100 years old when he died.

---

When we hear about average lifespans of people born in the 18th and 19th centuries, we have to keep in mind that the numbers on which those lifespans are based include the deaths of every person on record, including infants and children. As we all know, child and infant mortality in those days was much, much higher than it is today, but we don't think about that in discussions of expected lifespans. The result is that what we hear as being average lifespans two centuries ago are skewed and do not represent the age to which an adult could potentially live. Case in point ...

There is a woman in my family tree who appears in every census from 1850 to 1910 in Gallia County, Ohio with ages that consistently place her birth between 1812 and 1815. While she has not been found in the 1920 census, her 1922 Ohio death certificate states that she was born in West Virginia in 1815 and died in Gallia County in 1922 at the age of 106 years, 7 months, 24 days. The woman was so well known in her community that the newspaper published articles about celebrations for her 100th and 105th birthdays.

---

In this case he also has an anachronistic middle name.  100 isn't impossible,  but 9 times out 10, it's a mistake.  It's almost certain that two generations have been conflated here.

---

That's also a 20th century example. Around the late 1800s is when you should expect a more modern life expectancy. The guy in this profile was (supposedly) born in one of the roughest parts of the American frontier in the mid 1700s. It was not an area conducive to longevity.

---

The only reason she can be considered 20th century is that she lived to be almost 107.  She had lived half her life by 1868 and was 80 by 1895.

---

If you live up to a point at which mortality decreases, that increases your life expectancy. The few decades after the Civil War are when you really start to see mortality moving down in the US. She spent the last 40% of her life under conditions with plummeting mortality rates, so that shouldn't really be taken as indicative of conditions 70 years earlier.

---

LOL. If you look at the 1840 census for Ephraim Osborn that's cited as a source in the profile, it lists his age as 50-60, so unless he fell into a time warp, he wasn't 100 years old when he died 12 years later.
"United States Census, 1840," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9YBS-NHZ?cc=1786457&wc=31SK-KXN%3A1588665941%2C1588668533%2C1588665902 : 24 August 2015), Kentucky > Harlan > Not Stated > image 29 of 41; citing NARA microfilm publication M704, (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.).

And I reiterate my claim, 9 times out of 10, it's a mistake.

---

I have an ancestor like this. According to family tradition circa 1970, she died at the age of 111. After I did some research, I found a written source dating from around 1910 that claimed she died at 101. When I tracked her down in the census, her actual age at death turned out to be about 91 (coincidentally, the same age my GGM who gave the 111 year age died at). In the 100 years after she died, she turns out to have magically aged by about 20 years.

---

Given the 1840 census, I'd guess what happened here is that the profile is for an Ephraim Osborn, quite possibly Ephraim Washington Osborn, who was born after 1780, and the genealogical process of "wishful thinking" has led him to be identified as Ephraim Osborn, the Rev War veteran.

---

Nope, turns out to be even more complicated. The Ephraim in 1840 is a younger Ephraim. However, if you go back to Harlan in 1830, the elder/st Ephraim does show up in his own household, aged 60-70, so he was born in the 1760-70 range. Thus, his age in 1850 does appear to have been exaggerated, but probably only by 10-15 years rather than 20-some. The profile in correctly associates the 1840 census with this Ephraim, which probably means a lot of the data in it is from various different Ephraim Osborns.

"United States Census, 1830," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XHGP-Q31 : 24 August 2017), Ephraim Osbourn, Harlan, Kentucky, United States; citing 124, NARA microfilm publication M19, (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.), roll 37; FHL microfilm 7,816.

Answer 1

the Washington family was a well-to-do family in Virginia even before George Washington was born.  Furthermore, George Washington fought under General Braddock in the French and Indian War, so some of his fame might have stemmed from there.

I don't have all the answers to this question, but am only offering some possibilities.

Answer 2

President George Washington isn't the only person with that name and certainly isn't the only one with that surname. Why would you automatically conclude that the person was named after him?

Answer 3

A lot of middle names on the internet aren't real, they're just made up by the internet.  People just don't seem to like having ancestors without middle names.

In this case, there doesn't seem to be any source to support the name.  I'm guessing his grandson was the first to have the name for real.

Comments

I like your answer too.

---

There are 6 George Washingtons in my family tree and 9 in my husband's. Nearly all were born in the early to mid 1800s. One was born in 1870. Very few of them are even on WikiTree because, unlike a lot of (maybe most) users, I add profiles manually, one at a time. Their names came from actual records.

We also have a few Benjamin Franklins in each tree, all born in the mid to late 1800s.

---

I just searched the 1850 U.S. census at familysearch.org for "first names" "George Washington", selecting exact spelling. There are 237 men with first and middle names George Washington and surnames from Allenbach to Zink.
Then I searched the same census at the same site for "Geo. Washington" as first and middle names, again selecting exact spelling. There are 103 of those, with surnames from Adams to Wills.
However, only 1 of all those was born pre-Revolution.

Answer 4

I have found some who were born George but seem to to have adopted the middle name Washington along the way. In many places, folks just used whatever name(s) that pleased them.