I knew I would need some context to make sense of this. Was Lavinia Meekins a single eccentric? Are these names part of a pattern? I dug into the census and found some surprising things.
I'll break this research up into several posts because the information is a little hard to digest all at once. I haven't made sense of the data yet and I'm not sure I can do that without some sources other than the census. Here are some of my initial observations:
- Lavinia Meekins was not a lonely eccentric. Many black parents in the Confederate states named their children after Confederate heroes during the war years — Jeff Davis, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, etc.
- Fewer black parents named their children after Confederate heroes after 1865. White Southerners continued to give Confederate names to their children into the 20th century.
- Some Confederate names (Jeff Davis, Stonewall) dropped off rapidly after 1865. Others (Robert E. Lee) gained in popularity after 1865.
- At least nine families have one child named Jeff Davis and another named Abe Lincoln. Sometimes they are twins.
- Many white Southerners named their children after Northern heroes — U.S. Grant, Sherman, Lincoln, etc.
- Perhaps masters named children and enslaved parents had no say in the matter. That would explain the sharp decline in these names after 1865.
- Perhaps enslaved parents named their children after Confederate heroes to feign docility. If this were the case, I would expect parents to rename/nickname the child after the war, which doesn't account for names on the 1870 census (unless feigning docility was still necessary during Reconstruction).
- Perhaps some slaves really did support the Confederate cause. In any group of 4 million people, you're bound to find a range of political opinions. It's not hard to imagine that some people might prefer to preserve the status quo rather than gamble on an uncertain future.
- Perhaps people named their children names from the news, regardless of the political associations. You see this in recent naming patterns when awful hurricanes cause bumps in popularity for their names.
- Perhaps census-takers have odd senses of humor.
Data and Discussion: