WACASTER GENEALOGY

THUMBNAIL HISTORY

The Wacasters are a wild and strange line.  Considering their ancestral mix, you couldn't expect it to be any different.

To begin with, there are six different spellings of their name (that I'm aware of) plus the original.  The most recent is Wacaster, but when people hear it pronounced with a long 'a', the natural inclination is to spell it Waycaster.  Moving back in time, you have Wacasey/Waycasey along with a slightly stranger form, Wacaser/Waycaser.  These are all corruptions of the original spelling of Weckesser.  So...the seven known spellings of the name are:

     Weckesser   Wacaser     Waycaser    Wacasey    Waycasey     Wacaster    Waycaster

The original name is...as far as is known...Weckesser and is pronounced Veckesser.   This is due to the fact that the name is originally German.  The Germanic language has no 'W' sound, instead being pronounced as a 'V'.  For example, the name Weiss is usually pronounced in the U.S. as 'Weese' or 'Wice'.  However, the correct pronunciation is 'Vice' (and it means 'White' if you're interested).

Once they arrived in the New World about 1747, one branch began migrating southward, the name gradually changing in the process.  Other Weckesser  members apparently stayed in Pennsylvania for some time and then gradually moved westward across what would eventually become the northern tier of states.  I have no information on that branch at all...yet.

In the process of their southern migration, along with the progressive name changes, they began to marry people of non-German ancestry...a fairly typical pattern when emigrating to a new country.  By the time it was all said and done, the Weckessers/Wacasters, et al, that had begun moving south into Virginia and the Carolinas, eventually worked their way around the southern end of the Appalachins and came to ground in Mississippi.   Apparently another group staked out territory in Arkansas because there's a large group in that state.  Texas also has it's share of the family, though in many cases a Wacaster woman married into another line, adding another name to keep track of

By the time they found homes in Mississippi, Arkansas and Texas, many different bloodlines had intermingled to form a truly fascinating ancestry.  No longer pure German, the Wacasters were now a mix of German, English, Irish, Scot and Cherokee...at least.  Between the fact that anyone who wanted to could disappear for years in those days, if not the rest of their life, that they were born fighters (if there wasn't a fight in their vicinity, they'd go looking for one) as well as womanizers (at least some of them), along with a frequent dearth of records, there's no telling what other ethnicities and/or Indian tribes have become part of the Wacaster line.

Just the background I've recited is enough to make the Wacaster line very fascinating.  But there's one additional factor that marks them as unusual.  Many (or even most) names in this country cannot claim to be related to every person with the same last name.   Williams or Johnson for example...and of course, Smith and Jones.  The Wacasters can.  Regardless of spelling, every Wacaster who has lived, is living or will live in the future is related.  The only exception would be the black (or African-American) Wacasters who took the Wacaster name after they were freed from slavery.