Laurence, Nora

While visiting with Juanita Clower Kirby Wells about her family photo album on this website, it was brought to my attention that I had her grandmother's family last name Laurence spelled wrong as Lawrence. This was a little shocking to me since the family had been in my research for 20 years spelled with a "w". Juanita said that the correct spelling was with a "u", however "w" had been used so much that it had been kind of considered interchangeable. I did have the name spelled Laurence for William Ezekiel. We found the name spelled Lawrence on a 1923 Land Oil and Gas Lease for W E and Jennie Lawrence and census records and we found the name spelled Laurence on the 1906 Marriage License for Alph Harrison and Nellie Laurence and on W E and Jennie Laurence's tombstone. I thought I would just have to leave the spelling as both ways and explain the "interchangeable" theory. I thought about it and of course couldn't rest with the name being wrong and not getting the respect on our family website that it deserves. I went back to the oldest information I could have, which was Warren County, Tennessee. Unfortunately all the Census Records and books from that area had the name spelled both ways...even on the same page and in the same family. I found Civil War records with James P Laurence and all of the family marriage license, birth certificates and tombstones back to the 1800s with the spelling Laurence and therefore corrected all of the spelling on the website to LAURENCE.