Great Grandmother Myrle Orga (Wier) Cooley and Great Grandfather Dana Cooley.
When the Irish born Cooleys landed on the East coast of America, their name underwent a significant change. Due to the amount of illiteracy and the phonetic challenges of Gaelic dialects, surnames began to be spelled the way they sounded to the individual documenting it. Whither it was for immigration papers, birth certificates, licensing and the like, names slowly underwent small changes at a time. Although those changes are unknown to me, at one time Cooley (Koo-lee) in it's original Irish origin is spelled Kaulie (Kau-lee). You can see the differences in the representation of the vowels is likely to do with its pronunciation.
Cooley kids, 1930s
Although I didn't have the pleasure of meeting either of my paternal great grand fathers, I knew both my paternal great grand mothers: Myrle Cooley and Sylvia Gillam. The picture above is of the Cooley children and several friends (my Grandmother Susan was the little girl standing on the bumper of the car). In the background of the photograph you can see Dana's sport plane that he built himself for fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment