Thursday, September 29, 2011

Treasure Chest Thursday - A Wisconsin Name Change in 1866

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It's Treasure Chest Thursday - time to look in my digital image files to see what treasures I can find for my family history and genealogy musings.

This week, the "treasure" is the Wisconsin State Senate Act that officially changed the name of Devier Lamphier to Devier J. Smith:


I found the name change record in the book (Wisconsin Legislature, Enrolled Acts, resolutions and memorials, 1836-1943 (259 volumes), Series 188, Volume 80 (1866, January-March) in the Wisconsin State Historical Society Archives in Madison, Wisconsin.  The label on the bound book says:

"SECRETARY OF STATE
Elections and Records

Legislative Journals, 1836-

Senate Journal,
1866, #2"

The page that shows the official name change is the right-hand page in the picture below:





This page reads:

AN ACT

To change the name of Devier Lamphier to Devier
J. Smith and constitute him the legal heir of
Ranslow Smith of dodge County.

The People of the State of Wisconsin represented
in Senate and Assembly do enact as follows:

Section 1.  The name of Devier Lamphier is here-
by changed to Devier J. Smith and the said Dev-
ier Lamphier is hereby declared to be the adopted
child and legal heir of Ranslow Smith of
Dodge County.

Section 2.  This act shall take effect and be in
force from and after its passage and publication.

Henry A. Barron
Speaker of the Assembly

Wyman Spooner
President of the Senate

Approved March 21st 1866
Lucius  Fairchild
Governor

I asked at the Archives if I could obtain a photocopy of this page, or if I could take a digital photograph of the page.  The curator looked at the volume, judged that it was too fragile to make a photocopy from, and permitted me to take digital photographs of the pages.  I took several, and the one above is the "best" and "most readable" of the ones I took.  It is imperfect...

1 comment:

Christine M. said...

My 3rd cousin & I discovered that our hard-to-find ancestor, George Washington Colomy, changed his name to George Washington Chesley in Massachusetts. Exciting as the discovery was, we're finding that Mr. Chesley is even more difficult to track down!