Class Assignment: What Does Your Name Mean?

I have often wondered where my last name came from... and what it means... I'm quite sure the name Scrivner... from my mother's side of the family means Scribes... It has an English connotation... when people asked "Scribes' to write letters for them...My Grandmother Scrivner could not read or write. As a boy I read the Bible and the Russellville Rustler to her.

The Folklore of Scrivner-Shikles is that a Prussian Soldier , came to America and fought with the British...in America's early days...After the Revolutionary War he had a Family and farmed in Kentucky...In a few generations ..these families migrated West AND there were A number of families with these names, in Missouri. The fact that they 160 Acres, a piece, and cleared the land and farmed it is significant. I revel in talking about “Shocking: Wheat, Milking cows, hoeing vegetables, fiddler’s contests where my uncle Hiram (My Father’s twin brother) was one of the best. Ice Cream Socials, putting the hay, digging sassafras roots for tea, singing around a pump organ in the parlour on Sunday afternoons. The horse hair sofa...sleeping on a feather bed...chiggers, firefly bugs & glorious wheat thrashing days.

My Grandmother Scrivner had 13 children, I was told..I ONLY KNEW ABOUT NINE.

Croup, falling in the slough water killed two of them...Some had still birth...There were 7 I knew quite well.

A few weeks ago when I was in Colorado, I said at dinner that "MY Name would die with me...My daughter ,went to the computer and Lo!... there are listed over 1100 names of "Shikles" and Scores of "Scrivners."