I am doing my family's genealogy, and some of our ancestors lived in a town in Henry County, Virginia called either Horsepasture (1 word) or Horse Pasture (2 words). Different records show one or the other. Even an internet search is confusing in the same way. Could someone who knows PLEASE tell me which is correct? Or does it matter? Are both acceptable?
Anonymous
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Both. Welcome to the wonderful world of Genealogy, where spelling varies. Wait until you get a 4th great grandmother named "Katherine/Catherine/Katheryne/Caltheryne/Kathirine/Cathirine"".
I traced a guy whose last name, mostly, was "Mathews". I found him as "Mathews", "Matthews" and "Mathis" - in the same document.
If you want to be accurate, look it up in Google Maps, and record it as "Horsepasture (Horse Pasture), Henry, Virginia".
Bonus 1: Every county in Texas has a town or township named "Sweet Water" or "Sweetwater". Have fun with that!
Bonus 2: I often compare genealogy to doing the crossword in the daily newspaper, except you don't get your answers in the next edition.
Bonus 3: My wife has a relative born in England who spent most of her life on the USA, and we'll never know if she was born 6 December or 12 June, because the only birth date we have for her is "6/12".
Anonymous
Horsepasture/horse-pasture clearly is one word, but american newspeak-artists are confusing everybody on purpose by using spaces instead of hyphens for compound-nouns
as if a greenhouse is the same as a green house