they're creepy and they're kooky
May. 25th, 2010 10:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacI 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.
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.
