they're creepy and they're kooky

[calimac]

I am reading a biography of Rutherford B. Hayes, the President with the silliest first name - not excepting Millard - in all U.S. history. (Grover and Woodrow were actually middle names, which gives them a pass.)

Why I'm reading this now will be made clear in time, but if I were reading it for an explanation of the name Rutherford, I'd have to count myself disappointed. It was his father's and grandfather's name, and where they got it from is not recorded here.

But what is illuminating is the number of other interesting names, especially in his mother's family. His mother's name was Sophia, but she had a brother named Sardis (Uncle Sardis, a true eccentric whose greatest claim to fame was once clearing a passel of hogs out of the path of Andrew Jackson, was a major figure in young Rud's - that's what the family called him, Rud - life) and a sister named Arcena.

And their mother, Rud's grandmother, had a name I never expected to see outside of obscure Roman history and defunct Gothic television shows. Would that it were Morticia, but no. It's almost as good, though. Her name was ...

Drusilla.

Comments

[margdean56.livejournal.com]

Georgette Heyer also used that one. :)

[rozk.livejournal.com]

I actually knew someone called Drusilla and it was her birthname, too. An art student jeweller whose brother was the fiance of my Oxford housemate. Who, come to think of it, was Julia Seiber, daughter of Matyas, and my 2 degrees of separation link to Bartok, Kodaly and Donhyani...

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

Fun. Who's the author? Is it part of that recent series of short presidential bios?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

This is the full-length biography by Ari Hoogenboom, published 1995. The Hayes book in the short American Presidents set was one of the most distinctly dull and superficial entries in a generally (with some exceptions) dull and superficial series.