Guilerme Moises Benabides Dinis (AKA William Edward Harlowe), J2b2a1a1a1b3c - Speculative origins

I live in Charlottesville, just up the street from the historical society, so if there's anything I can do, let me know.

It looks like this surname convention is a carryover from the profile discussed at Joao Moises Dionis Benabides (J2b2a1 CTS6190), where we've already established that no one by that name existed -- or, at least, that there's no evidence that anyone by that name existed. So any subsequent generations being given those conventions would be questionable at best.

I'll look into this more later, but one thing jumps out at me: British-descended families from this period frequently changed the spellings of their names, and adding an "-e" to the end was very common. (See also: the rhyming "Marlow"/"Marlowe" and "Barlow/Barlowe.") But this was due to linguistic reasons, not religious ones. British-American surnames don't begin to stabilize until the 1800s. It's one of the reasons behind Soundex on genealogy sites. And then you have the whole Census-taker issue.

So it doesn't really check out to me that an "-e" on the end of a Virginia name signifies Sephardic background. It signifies instead that the person was an average Anglophone in his place and time.

I would also question the narrative implied in the "About," in which his issues with taking communion were related to him being Sephardic. The Richmond Dispatch of July 11, 1902 provides more nuance: yes, he had an uneasy relationship with his Baptism, but it was due to his "strong leaning to the Methodist doctrine of open communion." In other words, he was a Christian stuck in the wrong denomination, not a Jewish person stuck in the wrong religion overall.

This again would not be unusual for the period, with the combination of family ties, social pressures, and localized dominance of denominations leading to many people joining ones they didn't entirely agree with. Another example would be all the Presbyterians from Ulster who wound up becoming Methodists in areas with no Presbyterian or Baptists churches, or the New Englanders who begrudgingly became Episcopalians for socioeconomic uplift.

Here's the link: https://www.myheritage.com/research/record-10449-12289654/richmond-...

So, I've been doing more research on this. A few things:

1) His Christianity isn't in question, so he would not have had any connection to a synagogue. Here's the full paragraph on his beliefs from the above-referenced obituary.

"He was a member of the Baptist church, but had a strong leaning to the Methodist doctrine of open communion. His religious convictions were of the most pronounced and exemplary character. His observance and belief in family prayer-service was one of the strongholds of his faith in his Master. He always participated in religious meetings, and was for a number of years superintendent of Sunday schools. He was often called upon to conduct the burial services of his neighbors and friends."

Does this deep profession of Christian belief eliminate the possibility of Crypto-Jewish background? Not necessarily -- but it *does* eliminate any affiliation with a synagogue. So I'm going to pull that info, as well as misleading emphasis in the son's obituary, from the "About."

Related to this, it makes the assertion made on the blog screenshot at https://www.geni.com/photo/view/6000000014451651162?album_type=phot...= hard to believe. This man's profession of faith was not "perfunctory" by any measure; if anything, it was deeper than the average person's, even in the 1800s U.S. South.

2) There's absolutely no record anywhere of him being called Guilerme Moises Benabides Dinis. And we've already ruled out the "Benabides Dinis" convention for his (formerly connected) father. So that needs to be removed, too.

3) He did not use an "-e" on his surname during his lifetime, so we can't retroactively attribute that to him. That information also needs to be pulled.

4) I'm still looking for a birth record, but FindAGrave and other trees have him being born in Fluvanna County, Virginia, not in Charlottesville, Ablemarle County. Albemarle and Fluvanna border each other, but we need to firm up with certainty which place it was. Can anyone help look?

I'm sorry to post again, but I just found another issue when going to edit the "About":

The profile says William was baptized into the Church of the Brethren. This raises flags again -- the Brethren are a largely German denomination, they practice credobaptism, and they're pacifists. The obituary says he was Baptist with Methodist leanings. The profile says he had Confederate service (Brethren famously did not serve), while the obituary doesn't mention any military service (something basically unheard of, especially in Virginia).

Do we have different men mixed up again, as we did with Joao/John? More importantly, do we have a baptismal record?

I'm going to keep full transparency going by logging here what I've done:

1) The bulk of the military into has been moved to a document, since there's no need to have a full company list, etc. on the profile: https://www.geni.com/documents/view?doc_id=6000000114327823179&

2) The source for the above has been preserved in the new "Sources" section.

3) I've removed this from the eulogy: "The Eulogy for William Edward, in 1902, clearly spells out what became of him at the age of 8...and his relationship with the local religious community, and the fact that he was a 32nd Degree Scottish Rite Freemason." The eulogy does not spell out any of those three things; it particularly does not say anything about his Masonic degree. Due to this, I've also removed the leading bold text.

4) For reasons explained in previous posts, I've removed the line about his name having an "-e" on the end to denote conversion.

5) I've added an intro section with verifiable, cited info, and also transcribed the obituary since it's past copyright.

6) Since the obituary and FindAGrave both agree that he was born in Fluvanna County and died in Quinque, I've updated those fields.

7) I've removed the profile from Jewish projects.

Finally, an important correction...I was totally wrong about his obituary not mentioning his military service. It absolutely does, and I have no idea how that slipped my mind. Apologies!

Thanks Ashley. You might also want to work on Bolivar Walker Harlow who is a real person, albeit perhaps with different parents than what Jaim listed.

I fixed Bolivar Walker Harlow -- the info in the "About" was accurate (I've greatly expanded it), but he'd somehow wound up as the son of his wife and an unknown man.

I've added the correct parents (William "Joshua" Harlow and Elizabeth "Betsey" (Walker) Harlow) and his wife (Lydia Adaline Harlow), and have locked fields and left curator notes to avoid future problems.

I am not locking relationships because I hope someone *else* will build his tree. :)

I deleted an above post to make a correction:

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I have one other (hopefully final!) thing to add about William: the eulogy attribution has to be incorrect. Per the Library of Virginia and the Virginia Historical Society, there was no Greene County Record in 1902; it began publishing in 1911. It also could not have been the Greene County Register, since that did not begin publication until 21 August 1903. No previous publications used either paper's name.

So the eulogy must be misattributed. I tried searching the text of the eulogy in a few databases -- Newspapers.com, NewspaperArchive, and MyHeritage -- with no luck. Can we find the correct newspaper?

For transparency, a follow-up to say that I've removed the purported eulogy from the "About" section since it still cannot be located in any newspapers from the time.

I have preserved it, with notes explaining the situation and questions about its origins, at https://www.geni.com/documents/view?doc_id=6000000171296845188