Whitmore Surname Project: Thomas Wetmore's Will

In The Wetmore Family of America (Albany: Munsell and Rowland, 1861), James Carnahan Wetmore tells us that Thomas Wetmore’s surname was spelled Whitmore in all colonial period documents, and that the Wetmore spelling did not become general until the fourth generation. One piece of evidence that he offers for this is Thomas’s will, for which he provides a transcript on pages 22-25. In 1904 Charles William Manwaring published a three volume set of abstracts of early Hartford District probate records, A Digest of the Early Connecticut Probate Records (Hartford: H. S. Peck & Co., Printers, 1904). Thomas’s will, which was recorded on pages 89 and 90 of Volume IV of the Probate Records, is abstracted on pages 382-384 of Volume I of Manwaring’s book under the name Thomas Whitemore sen of Middletown. The abstract of the will itself uses the spelling Whetmore for Thomas and for all his sons where a surname is given.

This discrepancy raised a question in the minds of several participants in this study, and Kevin J. Wetmore visited the Connecticut State Library in Hartford, where the original records are archived, and arranged to have the record of Thomas’s will and inventory photographed. He has agreed to share these with other interested Wetmore researchers. As is obvious from the photographs below, J. C. Wetmore must have worked from an inaccurate transcript and not from the original, as the name is spelled Whetmore, except for a single use of Wetmore and another of what appears to be Whatmore. It should be noted that this is not the hand writing nor the signature of Thomas Wetmore, but a court copy of the original document.

Vol IV pp 89-91 (click image below for enlarged image; click enlarge button on picture for further enlargement)