Re: 2 Holyfield's discovered in Loudoun County
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In reply to:
2 Holyfield's discovered in Loudoun County
James Holifield 1/27/04
I have since discovered that the transcription for the 2 Holfield's which one would expect were mispellings of Holyfield, were in fact "Hatfield's", not Holfield's as the author of the book that mention's these two individuals.William J.Hollifield of Maryland recently went to The Balche Library in Leesburg,VA and looked at the actual records and saw that the spelling was not what the author recorded in their book.So I'm sorry for the error in my reporting.In printed records that are recorded and published by Genealogists and Historian's the interpretation of cursive written record's is at the descresion of the author and not always accurate.There is a book that was published that lists the names of the soldier's Civil War record's from Georgia which lists an error as well.It shows my Great,Great Grandfather's name as being Wiley W. Holifield, and I have a copy of the actual records and only on one page is the middle initial written in such a fashion as to have the possible appearance of a "W" instead of the obvious appearance of an "H" that appears on all the other pages of the same record.Wiley H. Holifield who died in the Civil War first went awol in Aug/Sept of 1862 and then went back to fight in the Civil War, and 9 months later in June 1863, my Great Grandfather Wiley Henry Holifield was born who was apparently named after his father, further evidence of "W" being an error of transcribing the original hand written record.So when obtaining information from "printed transcribed records", think of them as having apparent accuracy, not verifiable accuracy, as I neglected to consider myself!
God bless,
James Holifield,
Pensacola,FL